Irina Spalko: Enemy of the State
by TheMaddnessOfDr.Strangelove
Summary: In the aftermath of the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Agent Spalko finds herself not only alive, but also facing a new set of circumstances that challenge her ideology as she continues to search for the great unknown mystery..the truth, whatever it may be
1. Chapter 1

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures. _

Chapter 1: The Void.

The ringing in her ears wouldn't stop

One moment the euphoric enlightenment filled her every molecule and in the next a complete disintegration of her consciousness ended her life. Only when her body came alive trapped inside burning flesh did she truly know she had survived her brush with the kingdom of the crystal skull. She let out a scream that made no sound. Fortunately, the pain didn't last. The Ukrainian's psychic abilities continued to serve her when she regained self-awareness. Not much, but she was able to ascertain that she had gone through a period of total _nothingness_. For however long, the colonel hadn't existed on any plain, living, dead, or points in-between. _Time_ was a problem. She had no grip on it. She didn't know how long she'd been in that state or how long she'd been lying on the ground before she came to. Strangely, the experience, which no human (she knew of) had ever been subject to, mattered little to her. The only thing that mattered was that her brief peak into the crack in the cradle of knowledge had been short lived. She had known everything. Now she was once again in the dark, naïve and yearning for _the_ answer.

There was a ringing in her ears that wouldn't stop. At least the pain had. She'd never felt anything like it before. It was nowhere near as _gentle_ as the sting from her whippings in boot camp. The expertly trained agent/doctor/colonel longed for the sloppy spray of hard leather against her back in exchange for what consumed her now. At that point she'd even be willing to let crows peck out her eyes. The Soviet Union taught one to be very accepting of loss and pain…it tended to boost _creativity_ in those same areas. Though usually improvisational mastery was applied to the fate of their enemies rather than to themselves in hypothetical exchanges for one gruesome death over another.

It was time, ears ringing or not, to gain a better sense of her surroundings and how she could escape wherever she was. Before anything else she had to gather herself. Steadying her breath so not to further her growing panic, a trait uncommon to her, she opened her eyes to darkness…_nothingness_. She rolled her head back and forth, trying to see anything that would give a clue to her situation. It didn't matter. Darkness…_nothingness_ surrounded her. Sitting up proved to be less of a challenge than she thought it would be. Staying upright was much more difficult. She immediately became dizzy and fell backward again. She swore to herself, damning the heavens, the severe whisper soundless in the void.

As if on cue, her bowls rippled and contracted. Her breath quickened. So she wouldn't choke to death on the inevitable spew she rolled over on her side and let the vomit come. Wave after wave, the acidic stomach slop locked her head in place as it violently forced its way out her body. Gasping for a full intake of air she sprawled back out onto her back.

_REST NOW. YOU WILL NEED IT._

The voice existed only in her head. It tore through her brain like a bull in a china shop. It was flat. _Mechanical _yet _alive, _neither male nor female.

Content not to argue, she gave in. Sleep didn't wait long to claim her.

Agent/Doctor/Colonel Irina Spalko had survived. Little did she know there had been a reason for it.

……………………….

Awake again. She knew. Wherever she was, it was _elsewhere_.

This time she planed everything ahead at half speed. One step…one second at a time. Again Spalko gently rolled her head back and forth, trying to see anything that would giver a clue to her whereabouts. All she saw was the thick void stretching on into nowhere. She waved he hands over her eyes and saw nothing. She patted herself down to her midsection. Everything was in its place, save her sidearm and her sword. The gimnasterka felt reasonably bolshevised considering the past…_three weeks_. Time had returned to her abruptly and unceremoniously. Her heightened intuition was returning, though clumsily like a muscle she hadn't flexed in a while.

Her panic was still evident, her heart feeling as if it were about to burst out of her chest.

Feeling ready to test further the fatigue of her abilities she concentrated on the panic and her heartbeat.

In her minds eye, she pictured herself encased a block of ice, her thoughts, emotions, her physical essence, frozen in one moment of time, her heart still somehow hot enough to pump blood. _pump-pump pump-pump. _And it was working hard, too hard. It had to go ten fold to push the clumpy, icy goo through her veins; it couldn't handle the workload, not in a thousand years. _pump-pump pump-pump. _It had to join the other organs in hibernation lest the KGB agent face certain death. _pump-pump pump-pump. pump-pump pump-pump. pump-pump… pump-pump._

She laid still for what seemed like forever. She couldn't see it, but she knew her chest began to rise and fall much slower. Panic was replaced by cool desperation.

As Spalko's fortitude increased the more settled she became in her hellish situation. She sat up purposefully, but slowly. Found her legs with her hands, unable to see them with her eyes and checked them as she had her upper body. All was in order.

Getting to her feet was a bit of a chore. She tried coming up from one knee at a time. This proved impossible. Her boots had no grit in which to cling to make friction and hoist her up. The slick floor behaved like an ice rink. Combined with her legs weakness from disuse, she had to find other methods of getting herself up. She had to crawl, seeing with her hands, along the smooth service. It gave off a very sterile impression…clinical. There was a strict, angular way in which the ground met with wall. Putting her back against a vertical edge and lumbering into a squat, Irina pushed up and steadied herself. The wall's texture was smooth and completely indistinguishable from the floor. Why was everything so dark? Was it some kind of new dimension in which beings saw in other means than eyes and heard without ears?

Irina leaned against her support and walked the perimeter of her new domain. She must have walked it a dozen times, unable to understand the eerie simplicity of its 10 x 10 design. She was in a box. A box with no door. Her hands darted along each inch of her surroundings and found no break, change of texture, no small, slightly rough hint of hinges, no bars, no knob…nothing…_nothingness_.

_REST NOW. YOU WILL NEED IT._

Once again her head lit afire.

_No! Where am I!? _Her mind fired back.

Something grabbed a hold of wrists. Cold and clammy. She fought against them. No use. She was putty. Spalko could barely stand; much less bring herself to fire off a kick. She folded quickly, collapsing to the ground. She screamed with no sound. She peered franticly into the void…the _nothingness_…to catch some glimpse of her attacker. Why couldn't she see them? _Why?_

She squirmed on the ground like a defiant child. The grip of her oppressor grew tighter. _Tighter._

What did you do to me?! What is this place?! Why is it so dark?!IT ISN'T

_Yes it is, Damn you! I see nothing! I hear nothing! Let me go!_

_IT ISN'T DARK. REST NOW. YOU WILL NEED IT._

A jolt of electricity sent her back into an absence of existence.

She would later come to terms with her void…her _nothingness_. Spalko was deaf and blind.

Next Chapter: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest


	2. Chapter 2

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

Chapter 2: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Spalko awoke as she had blacked out, lying flat, her arms restrained and outstretched above her head. A new development; her feet were tied tightly together. Groggy and still blind and deaf, she used her only senses left. Smell and touch. She didn't bother to open her eyes. She had accepted it. The muggy, sweaty smell was the perfect indication that she had been moved elsewhere. Before, there had been no smell around her. Things had been sterile in feeling and structurally cold. Now mildew and rot enveloped her. Her skin felt different. Her clothes had changed. Someone had undressed her and put her in simple, tightly knit cloth. If she hadn't known better, she would have sworn it felt like generic prison attire for criminals inside the Soviet Union, which both she had worn before, while in boot camp during her military training.

She no longer lay on a floor. Again a _familiar_ feeling came over her, like her new clothes… _déjà vu_? It felt like a cot, stern and rudimentary to the needs of a human being. Her feet, tied together, were bare and hanging off the edge. She swung them back and forth, the cold metal of the bed's structural rig running along the exposed skin of her ankles, confirming that indeed a cot held her captive. Strange. There was definitely an earthly presence about her surroundings. Had the aliens made accommodations to make her feel more at home? If so, why had they tied her down? What the hell was all this for? Her desperateness for answers grew more intense every time she awoke, her situation growing more complex each time.

Still not quite convinced of her confinements, she tried to sway her body from side to side to better feel out her placement. She managed, despite her overwhelming grogginess, which was increasingly becoming more pronounced. She heard the springs of the cot squeak and respond to her movement. She _heard_ them. True sound, not a product of her mind trying to stimulate itself with memories of what to expect in predictable experiences to fill the void the Ukrainian lived in. Her world was still dark, but she was no longer completely closed off from whatever _or wherever_ her world was now. How the delicate sense had come to be repaired she couldn't say. It mattered little.

All that _did_ matter was figuring it all out…and popping a few alien heads between her thighs. Feeling victorious in regaining one of her damaged senses, her anger spiked for the first time. Overcoming the disability in such a debilitating situation empowered Irina in her mind. As such, she felt like tearing her inter-dimensional captures asunder. Despite the euphoric sense of hostility, she was not delusional. She knew very well she was likely at the mercy of beings and devices beyond her comprehension. Which only further puzzled her as to why she was strapped to a cot.

The more Spalko stewed, the groggier she became. Something was wrong.

She had been drugged.

_Pang-pow!_

A bolt slid out of place and a rusty metal door creaked open. Spalko could hear heavy footfalls approach the foot of the bed where her feet lay helpless. Communication was dire. She'd been without awareness of condition and it was maddening to her abnormally orderly existence. She tried to speak; all that came out was a hoarse rasp.

Something snatched her ankles and held them tight. She could feel the grip. Two hands with freakishly thin digits. Like before she tried to resist, however this time she managed little than a weak jerk. The source of her groggy disposition became clear. She had been given muscle relaxants.

Those fingers…they were familiar.

Water…sloshing…in a bucket

The same familiarity washed over her again. This time it came with a fearful tightening her stomach. _No…no, _she thought.

Her feet were forced into a wide crowned bucket of water to enhance the stimulation of electricity. She knew that. She _knew_. The wet sensation actually left comfortable, but it brought no relief. _Pain_ was on the way.

Irina's déjà vu was not déjà vu…it was experience.

The thin fingers left her feet and pressed down on her head. Electrodes on either side of the head to help induce the seizures.

Those fingers…they had always been unfavorable to the touch…_always._

Those thin digits belonged to Col. Vektor Maslov of the KGB's Science and Technology Directorate.

She knew what was happening…and where she was…

…in a soviet prison being tortured with electroconvulsive therapy, comonly known as electroshock.

Chapter 3: Col Vektor Maslov


	3. Chapter 3

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

Chapter 3: Col Vektor Maslov

It had been three days since Agent Spalko regained…_coherency_. Cognitive function returned, her sight and hearing quickly followed, no thanks to the electroshock. She threatened, demanding answers for her imprisonment...as if she didn't _know_. _Hah!_ Typical of Maslov's standard operating procedure, at first there were no answers, no questions of his own, and no mercy. For four weeks, he tortured her nonstop with electroshock, foot whipping, asphyxia, rats, and his favorite, the _water cure_. Water cure is when the offending prisoner or captive has their nose clamped shut and their mouth wedged open and made to drink an excess of fluids to keep from drowning. His favorite part is when her belly filled to near bursting and he beat her until she vomited and the process began again.

_Maslov was misogynistic_. Female prisoners always got the worst of his treatment. Everybody in the Doctorate _knew_, but dared not hypothesize the reason.

Then it came time for the inevitable end to his fun. _Fun_ was a term used loosely here. It was never much fun when a prisoner was too proud to scream and _show_ him their pain. Spalko was the proudest woman he'd ever met. Given a few more weeks, he could have broken her. Alas, he had his duty. A reading of the charges and one last crack at the mystery of the Crystal Skulls before Maslov's superiors terminated the operation because of _the tragedy and Spalko's apparent insanity_.

Col. Vektor Maslov, fifty-three, painfully thin, gray headed with an edgy, almost mathematically precise widow's peak, didn't believe in honing hocus pocus for military applications. The only good _freak_ was a dead one. Thankfully, the Soviet Union had no plans to study Irina Spalko too hard before disposing of her. All they wanted was to put the epilogue on Operation Crystal Skull.

Despite having little interest in the paranormal or science applications of any kind, Maslov was assigned to the Science and Technology Directorate. He was specifically chosen in 1946 to be a part of the STD for his experience running a Soviet Military Prison during the war and because of his _questionable_ practices while in charge. He knew how to torture and oppress. Not exactly great criteria for the program, but he proved very useful on two specific points. Number one, his experience meant respect and any fledgling subprogram in the then named Ministry of State Security (renamed KGB in 1954) needed the promise of raw experience. Number two, as the STD grew, its paranormal investigations began stock piling individuals of _interest_ to the program such as telekinetics, psychics, and others with abilities in the metaphysical. In other words, people who could not be held in normal custody. As a runner of a military prison, Maslov was perfect for it, especially if information was in need of retrieval from the _freaks_. Thus was the глаз разума prison erected, reserved for the _freaks_ captured by the Soviet Union.

He'd met Spalko, a _freak_ of some psychic ability, only a few times, remembering that she found his handshake unfavorable, no doubt due to the ten thin twigs on the end of his hand. From their brief encounters within the program, she never appeared to be one who'd crack up. B_oy had she ever._

Dressed in his class A uniform as always, documents in hand via clipboard, Maslov exited his office and traveled the distance of the cold, murky, ill lit hallways to Spalko's cell. The guard stationed outside saluted and saw to opening the bolted metal door. A chair had already been placed an arms length from the bed up against the far wall. Not really necessary. She was tied down and at that point too weak to even walk. Maslov sat and waited for her eyes to focus on him. His gloved fingers tapped impatiently on his clipboard.

Irina looked terrible. Lack of food had reduced her form considerably. The bones of her skull had begun to protrude out of the skin of her face as she became more skeletal. Judging by the dark tuffs on her pillow, her hair had begun to fall out. Didn't matter. It wouldn't matter ever again. If Maslov knew the high archery like he thought he did, word would be forthcoming very soon on the details of her execution.

Her face held no expression, but she knew she'd finally get the answers she wanted…_needed._

_What had happened in the aftermath of her experience inside the kingdom of the crystal skull?_

_How had she come to be incarcerated?_

_Why was she being tortured by the one thing she held dear, swore to defend, and would give her life to perpetuate around the world?_

_Could it be merely a test of loyalty or was she…an enemy of the state?_

NEXT CHAPTER: IRINA SPALKO, OFFICER NO MORE.

ANSWERS WILL BE REVEALED!!


	4. Chapter 4

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

(Note: All text appearing in **bold** is dialogue spoken in Russian translated to English.)

Chapter 4: Irina Spalko, Officer No More

Maslov crossed his legs to brace the clipboard up so he could read it in the dimly lit cell Spalko inhabited. He could taste her anticipation. Despite all the pain that had been inflicted upon her, all the pain she surely must know was coming, Irina was intensely curious about the past month. This aroused Maslov's own curiosity. Until that moment, he was sure that she had been totally aware and conscious of her actions. He'd not seen her with his own eyes, the barrel of the Automatic Kalashnikov rifle (AK-47) lit afire, tearing apart six agents in the middle of her debriefing, but he trusted those who had. She looked _mad_, completely and unequivocally. Her eyes bulged. Her mouth twisted and contorted into a fowl snarl. She had done everything short of foaming at the mouth.

He'd seen maniacs try dodges before. Say they had _lost time_ or had no recollection of their actions. Combat fatigue was the most popular attempt to absolve one's crimes these days. It made the colonel sick to his stomach. But, when he looked at Spalko, weak and on the brink of death, he saw no mad woman. Maybe it was just her current predicament. Torture and malnutrition tended to modify a personality. You can't rampage if you can't stand up. Whether she had truly lost time or not mattered little. He would treat her no different.

"**Why am I being held here, Col. Maslov?**" Her tone was even and cold. To hear her, you wouldn't think Spalko was tied down in a prison cell. She sounded as if she were still in command.

Maslov smiled. She'd spoken first, obviously trying to gain the upper hand. In what he had no idea. He chose to ignore the question and flipped through the clipboard's contents silently. The reason of course was to gouge her, to keep needling her just for the sport of it. His mild amusement in the act didn't last. She didn't ask again or appear angered in any way.

"**Still playing innocent, woman?**" As an extreme misogynist, he chose not to address her by name or rank. "**Do you think it matters? Whether you were aware of your actions or not is at this point irrelevant. You sent shock waves through the chain of command, all the way to Comrade ****Khrushchev****. You've frightened people. There is no future for you no matter what your defense is.**"

"**If that's so, humor me with the details,**" Irina snapped back.

Maslov considered belting her in the face for her insolence. No woman dared speak to him in such an unflattering way. He resisted his urge and complied. Spalko had a point, woman or not. He raised the clipboard up and began reading the dossier.

"**On June 22, 1957 KGB Agent Colonel-Doctor Irina Spalko gave final Operation Crystal Skull update via communicaid. In this, Agent Spalko revealed that she had ascertained the whereabouts of Akator in the Amazon with help from prisoner Henry Walton Jones, Jr. Update included her then current coordinates. Agent Spalko went on to say that she was close to finding the Temple of Akator and completing her mission. When no further reports coming in, the KGB initiated a mission contingency. An arrangement of nine agents ventured into the Amazon Rainforest to discover the fate of the an obviously ill-fated mission. What they found was a wasteland and a babbling Agent Spalko, having suffered a mental break down. She was quoted as repeatedly chanting, '****space between spaces, space between spaces, space between spaces…'**" Maslov trailed off. He cast a quick glance at the possessor of the bob haircut in the cell with him and scoffed.

None of what he was saying rang true. Spalko didn't remember any of it. She tried desperately to convince herself that it was some kind of mass conspiracy against her. That it had all been a fabrication to disgrace her, being perpetrated by some rogue element in the KGB. But, as she recalled staring into the soul piercing eyes of the crystal skull alien in the temple, she knew Maslov spoke the truth. Not unlike Professor Harold Oxley, the kingdom of the crystal skull had tampered with her mental state.

"**It was assumed that Agent Spalko's mind had been warped and rendered incoherent in the same manner she reported to have happened to one of her prisoners in a previous** **communicaid, one Harold Oxley. Believing she was as harmless as the good professor, agents attempted bringing Spalko into custody. Set off by unseen forces, she snapped and took hold of an AK-47. She slaughtered six agents before collapsing into a coma. The Commanding Officer of the mission, prominent KGB scientist Col. Ivan Petrov, against advisement of immediate execution, opted to take the incapacitated Spalko back to the Soviet Union for testing and further study under his personal supervision. **

Testing revealed scarring of the cerebral cortex, nothing more. After her unexpected reawakening, Agent Spalko's sight and hearing was permanently damaged. Col. Petrov achieved some limited telepathic communication using Spalko's own abilities…"_What did you do to me?! What is this place?! Why is it so dark?!__IT ISN'T_

_Yes it is, Damn you! I see nothing! I hear nothing! Let me go!_

_IT ISN'T DARK. REST NOW. YOU WILL NEED IT._

Irina, at least within her own memory of the resent events in the aftermath of Akator, was never aboard a spaceship. While she was blind and deaf, she'd stumbled around within the confines of some room built for special experimentation, a guinea pig for Petrov's study…

Her heart sank as her cool was finally shattered.

Maslov was still talking.

"…**After results revealed nothing compelling, further study was terminated." **He finished the dossier and cleared his throat, his voice beginning to itch from disuse.

"**And that brings us here. You've been de-ranked and have been scheduled for execution by firing squad at this hour in two weeks time.**"

"**I was loyal…I never disgraced the motherland. This is my life!**"

Maslov, uncaring, stood satisfied to have finally pushed her to the edge.

"**This is the only life I've ever known! The Union is where I belong! I'm the best damn solider you'll ever meet! I wanted the skulls to extend the motherland's reach over all minds! I still do! You son of a bi-**"

He slammed the iron door closed before she could finish.

Two guards, altered by the commotion, appeared.

"**You two, take her to D block with the rest of the refuse. No restraints. She can barely stand. If we're lucky, she'll muster enough energy to kill herself.**" He started back to his office, but turned to deliver one last order. "**Oh, and give her a good roughing up...with my regards.**"

……………………

The left side of her face swelled up like a balloon ready to burst. After dumping her in her cell, one of the guards had kneeled atop her chest and punched her in the jaw at least half a dozen times. She didn't resist. She was _broken_.

Her new living arrangement was pitch black. No window, no light, nothing. Solitary confinement. Unable to stand, barely able to crawl, Irina managed to push herself up against a wall into a seated position.

The Soviet Union had been her salvation. Since she was child and her abilities damned her in the eyes of her village, Irina Spalko desperately searched for who she was and why she existed if her very presence only inspired fear and hatred. In the warm embrace of the Iron Curtain, her talents were not only useful, but also wholeheartedly welcomed. People ostracized her, her parents drove her away, but communism and its heroes sheltered her when she needed an answer. It was in that act of virtue that she found her destiny. Because of that act of chivalry in defense of an alienated little girl, she had vowed to not only defend, but also to perpetuate its ideals across the land no matter what. She'd carried its flag valiantly and she had been spit on in return.

Maybe she deserved it. She had committed murder against it. Maybe Maslov was right. Just because she couldn't stop herself or even remember didn't absolve her. She was prepared to die for the Soviet Union. But that had always been with her knowing it loved her. It didn't anymore. She was unloved…unwanted…_again_.

_**Let them kill me**_,she thought

_**Why say that, comrade?**_

Something…_someone_ had reached her telepathically. She strained to see in the dark. Wasn't she alone? Was there someone else in her cell? The compound was reserved for others like her after all. Perhaps another prisoner was attempting telepathic communication? Or was the direness of her situation causing her abilities to spill into someone else's mind nearby, in another cell. It peaked her interest only for a brief moment. Then her disgrace sunk in again. She hung her head.

_**Comrade? You there? **_

…

_**I'm next door to you. Lowly freak like yourself. Your thoughts are kind of hard to miss. Want to talk about it? I haven't spoken to another person for a great long while. It would be a tremendous favor. **_

_**Shut up.**_

_**A voice in the darkness calls to you and your not the least bit interested as to the source?**_

_**Shut…up…and stay out of my head.**_

_**Will you not speak to me? **_

_**I want to die…**_

……………………………………………..

Maslov had been in his office for about fifteen minutes when he got the call. His presence was required in the prison's dockyard. No specifics were given, but he had a fairly good idea of what it meant. He immediately made his way to the other side of the compound, through D block, where as he passed by Spalko's cell, he heard the faint sound of weeping. Maslov had broken her. He seriously doubted she'd make to execution in her current mental state. It would be a matter of time before he found her dead at cell check.

The dock had been cleared out except for a few select personnel. Col. Petrov, the short, pudgy, gray-headed scientist was already there, inside a singular panel tuck parked in the growing snow, helping agents pull a crate off of the vehicle. The temperature was dropping rapidly. Winter would be brutally uninhabitable before long. Despite his attitude toward the colonel, he was content to take part in the trek with their new prize. It was the perfect time for a mission elsewhere, in a climate more accommodating, even if it meant dealing with Petrov's annoying obsession with weaponizing the occult in his KGB pet projects. They were a waste of time.

Once the crate was delicately set onto the concrete floor, Petrov gleefully examined the exterior. "**Hah! This is it! To think Comrade ****Khrushchev**** was content funneling our resources toward the space race. To hell with the ****Sputnik 1****project!**" He stepped to one side of the crate and saw that a plank of wood had been nailed to it to cover a big scorch hole. "**What is this,**" he demanded of the lower ranking officers.

One reluctant uniformed fellow stepped forward. "**Sir, the crate was damaged in an explosion inside Hanger 51. The contents inside are unharmed, but we were forced to cover it up because several of the men were falling victim to second-degree burns when they were exposed to it for a prolonged period while in transit.**"

Petrov scoffed. "**That will do. Get it back on the truck, we're going to fly it out tonight to Moscow where we will wait for further instruction.**" He noticed Maslov. "**Colonel, let's get a move on!**" He was eager to start their journey to the airfield, some sixty miles away, buried in snow. He jumped into the passenger seat, naturally assuming that Maslov would drive, satisfied not to give him a choice.

Spalko had only been told that a team had been assembled to find her. While it was true, it had not been the whole truth. Interests lead a second, separate team to the aftermath of the Henry Jones escape from Soviet custody at Hanger 51. There they found a worthy consolation prize perhaps greater than any crystal skull.

After the crate was reloaded, the two officers began their long journey. For Petrov it was a great chance for the Soviet Union to become the greatest and perhaps only nation left with any military force in the world. For Maslov, it was another wild goose chase that would lead nowhere just like the crystal skulls. Even worse, this time their fool's gold had a prior reputation for disaster. The Third Reich had tried harnessing its powers and things had ended _badly_ to say the least.

The crate, despite the damage it had sustained, still had its American storage identification brandings. It read 'Top Secret Army Intel. 9906753 Do Not Open!'

Chapter 5: The Gift of the Kingdom


	5. Chapter 5

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

(Note: All text appearing in **bold** is dialogue spoken in Russian translated to English.)

Chapter 5: The Gift of the Kingdom

Irina found herself walking along a narrow hallway. She had no idea how she came to walking the path, surrounded by cold, judgmental steel. She knew she had to walk it. There was no the choice as on it lay the future, always in motion, coming at you, then quickly behind you, moving farther away becoming the past. Spalko, dressed in her WWII issued gimnasterka, walked consciously, one hand on her rapier, purposefully, knowing full well it had to be done despite any danger to herself. Her boots made no sound as she walked. There was _no_ sound. Where was she? Why ask? She _knew_. She knew exactly where she was.

_On board. _

The time she was missing between the kingdom and getting locked up…between those two spaces…was the space between spaces.

The walls were suddenly stark white, absent of any clues to her whereabouts. She stood over what she could only describe as an operating table, sitting quietly amidst a whole other world of technical precision, the one visible anomaly in what was otherwise a void of white light. It had the same dimensions, but was shinier, reflective, and yet she cast no reflection in it. Neither did the other _people_, if you could call them that. There were three of them. They were dark colored, looked rough to the touch, and had elongated heads. _**The Crystal Skull.**_ Her pulse quickened. The hyperesthetic experience of pain, every molecule on her skin, inside her body, from head to toe, lit aflame, going through the void of nothingness.

Her panic subsided after a minute or so, realizing the obliviousness of her presence. It was soon replaced by a cold, commanding, observant curiosity of a parapsychologist just watching the quirky mannerisms in which they went about their business. Consoles, seemingly drawn into the absence of color, responded to the tapping of their thin fingertips. It looked like three telephone operators making connections between callers, but at a rapid rate. Their fingers moved as if without command. Freakishly thin…like Maslov's. _**Relations, perhaps?**_ Her dry approach to humor fell on deaf ears.

They shifted from the _stations_ to a _wheelie_ worktable, that came into her vision unannounced with no evidence to support it even being in the room before and was also visibly, metallically so, standing out from the barren, limitless environment. The _spacemen_ walked it along together and neared it to the operating table. _**An experiment?**_ She knew an orderly assay when she saw one. They moved with striking purpose...like Prussians. The truly amazing thing was the lack of difference in which their movements and practices during a ritualistic work environment (if that's what it was) compared to human experiential procedures. The technology was alternative, beyond human comprehension, but only on a grand scale, finer details seemed shockingly similar. For example, they pushed the worktop on wheels with their hands, like ordinary humanoids. Some sort of invisible levitation didn't propel them. There was no hidden trick to it. They were still bound to the basic trifles that worked as minor obstacles in the daily life of an earth person. It was not a world of instantaneous actions and reactions like she saw in so many ridiculous propaganda films both American and Soviet that projected a completely utopian and futuristic society by the year 1980, everything a mere snap of the fingers.

On the worktop was a rust color bowl with two pairs of clamps sticking out on either side of the opening. A helmet.

As the spacemen neared the operating table (she had settled on calling it that) it became quite suddenly occupied. It was then she finally caught her own reflection in the metallic object because it was herself she saw occupying it, gimnasterka, bob hair cut, breeches, boots, rapier and all. Her pulse once again quickened…faster...and faster.

The second Spalko's eyes were wide with feral fear, but from what Irina could tell, she could not move or defend herself. The spacemen put the helmet on her and clamped her eyes open so she could not close or shield them. The pulse…faster and faster.

The spacemen's skin burned away, their crystal bodies becoming completely immersed in the light. Second Spalko's eyes instantly became dry and started frying like egg yokes in a frying pan under the immense heat being created. The pulse…faster and faster.

They popped out of the sockets and starting melting down her face, leaving two bullet holes at the bottom of her forehead. She was screaming now. Irina didn't know if it was herself or her double. Probably both. The pulse…faster and faster.

She unsheathed her rapier and darted blindly into the fierily beacon of phosphorescence. "**STOP!**" At the center of the radiance she saw them, the outlining of their forms, standing hand in hand. She swung the sword widely at them, the blade passing through them. She came out the other side of the beam and saw the bored out holes that were once her eyes fill with light...life…the power...the wrath of god falling on her!

There was nothing she could do. She was displaced. She had no effect on anything that could or would happen. To do so would be to interfere in the past...her past. She was witnessing history.

Once again, he lunged into the light. Instead of three immensely illuminated spacemen she saw a golden chest, two angels on either side of its apex, outstretched toward one another, their wings touching.

She fell into darkness. World without time. From the void came sounds, all connected to one thing…one purpose…one object.

"Tanis development proceeding…"

"Wiped clean by the wrath of god.."

"Don't look at it, Marion! Keep your eyes shut!"

Irina woke up in a watery pool of her own vomit. It was yellow, meaning there was nothing left to it but stomach acid. For what she guessed was about a week (hard to tell in pitch darkness and going in and out of consciousness), she'd stewed on how to get back into the graces of her motherland. With her ever growing more bony knees pulled up close to her body, her head tucked in between them, she considered every logical possibility. There wasn't one. Every time she followed a hypothetical lead in her mind's eye it ended with her blindfolded and shot to death in the middle of her last cigarette. Irina had finally accepted the inevitable. She would die an enemy of the Soviet Union. The thought swelled up tears in her eyes.

When she wasn't stewing over her looming fate, she slept feverishly, having the same nightmare over and over again. She knew at least part of it was what had happened during the period she couldn't remember, before KGB agents found her muttering insanity in the remnants of the crystal skulls kingdom. The last part she didn't recognize at all. A gold box in the center of light and words she'd never heard before. For some reason, she was drawn to the chest. The allure was no different than that of Akator. _**The answer lies within, **_she thought to herself, alone in the dark. Well, not completely alone.

That would definitely seem like the case, comrade. Though perhaps it's in yourself, not the treasure of sierra madre in your dream.

**_I thought I told you to stay out of my head…and to leave me alone,_** she replied to the telepath in the prison cell next door to hers as she sat up. She stretched her legs out in front of her as she let her back fall against the cold gravel barrier between the two captives. She figured she try to achieve some kind of relaxing position. She didn't think it would be more than a couple of days before she wouldn't be able to move anymore. Every moment, she grew weaker and weaker.

**_So?_**

**_So, why do you go on? Have you nothing better to do?_**

Seems like a good enough reason, given the circumstances. Also, I'm fairly sure I can help you escape this place.

She rolled her eyes. It hadn't been the first time her friend had said that or a mired of other things while she was awake. According to the voice, he was Pvt. Mikhail Romanova, formerly of the Soviet army, remote viewer and telepath. Before incarceration, he was a medic at a MASH unit during the war where his talents were put to use during medical operations where, by projecting his astral form, he acted as a human x-ray. However, after WWII, the Soviet Union looked to use his ability for military applications. Being a loyal solider, but not a fan of world domination, he refused and his understanding superiors immediately had him put away where he had remained since with no human interaction. Explained his talkativeness. His enthusiasm about busting her out was also not completely without appreciation, however her chances of escape were slim to none and slim had already receded from her options. She was also preoccupied with loosing hold of the only things she held dear, her patriotism and her country. At times she wanted to get her status and rank back, other times she wanted to slice Maslov's throat, but most of the time she wanted death and that left no time for annoying telepaths.

She began to weep. She'd wept only once before coming to the prison, when her parents abandoned her, leaving Irina to the uncaring societies of the outside world. But, she had picked herself up and gathered knowledge from all over the Eurasian continent…

**_What's so different about this time?_** Her neighbor was persistent.

**_Go away…_**

**_So you found what you thought was the truth and were wrong. Did you think life would be that cut and dry? Pick yourself up and try again, but take with you from this what you've learned._**

**_And what is that?_**

**_That people are more than the flags they carry._**

**_Don't try to change me…_**

**_If those nightmares of your are any indication, you've already been changed, in one way or another. I'm not trying to change anything about you, merely help you use the gift they gave you to get out of here._**

**_They? What gift?_**

**_Don't you remember? They wanted to give you a 'great gift'?_**

**_How do you know about that?!_**

**_I told you already. Your thoughts are hard to miss._**

**_Go…away…_**

**_I can't help you remember what happened when you were with them...but I've felt what they left with you. Whatever you had before…intuition, mind reading…that's why they chose you…it's been changed...altered...you've been given the way out. Go!_**

**_And then what?! I've no compatriots…no country! I've shamed my motherland!_**

**_Still only a slave to your country. I thought you searched for truth._**

**_I did!_**

**_Which proves you are more than the flag you carry. Governments like the Soviet Union and the United States already have their 'great truth.' The Soviet Union instilled its version of the truth into you and you followed it, yet still when you went into that jungle in the Amazon, you were still searching._**

**_Don't preach to me!_**

**_I'm not, just stating the facts. That's how I work…with fact. You work with truth. You haven't found it yet. Otherwise you'd be doing what your government told you to do…give them fact, specifically hard and tangible evidence providing the means to rule the world._**

**_Go away…_**

**_You've got company._**

The bolt slid back and the door opened. In stepped a man she hadn't seen before. His uniform suggested he was a Lt. in the red army. He wasn't armed. He didn't say anything, just began to unbuckle his belt. She immediately knew what his intentions were. A good beating. She scattered, crawling to the back wall with what small amount of energy she had left, putting distance between them. He let out a brief, stiff chuckle. Her lips formed a scowl. Feelings of fear, anger, hatred all bottled up into one ball of pain formed and in the pit of her stomach and started working its way up. He took a few steps toward Spalko and stomped his boot down on her left bare foot. She didn't scream.

On her back motionless as the Lieutenant beat her with a belt, Irina stared up at the ceiling illuminated by light coming in from the open cell door. Her eyes blurred in and out of focus, blinded by a rage she had no energy to express.

She caught side of a light fixture on the ceiling of her cell she hadn't seen before because of the perpetual darkness. No longer interested in anything but dieing, Irina Spalko closed her eyes.

She let go.

Her breathing started to slow. She once again found herself frozen in a block of ice, no longer in the heat of her mangled body.

Frozen in one moment of time, her heart still somehow hot enough to pump blood. pump-pump pump-pump. And it was working hard, too hard. It had to go ten fold to push the clumpy, icy goo through her veins; it couldn't handle the workload, not in a thousand years. pump-pump pump-pump. It had to join the other organs in hibernation so the KGB agent could escape in death.

…pump-pump…pump-pump… pump-pump.

She was near cardiac arrest before the burned out bulb in the fixture began sparking. Before a few moments passed it was uninterrupted light, weak at first, but getting brighter…brighter...and hotter.

pump-pump pump-pump. pump-pump pump-pump. pump-pump pump-pump. The ice was melting. Too hot…too hot. pump-pump pump-pump. pump-pump pump-pump. pump-pump pump-pump. TOO HOT. pump-pump pump-pump. pump-pump pump-pump. pump-pump pump-pump.

Her eyes shot open as the bulb shattered in a brilliant explosion of color. The glass shot across the man's face, his beating arm in mid swing. Shouting obscenities, he stormed from the room, rosy blood squirting from his cheeks

The door slammed behind him, the bolt back into place.

Irina's ears rang for an hour. She wasn't sure if it was because her pulse had shot up from nearly nonexistent to stroke levels or because of the bulb's sudden kamikaze sounding very much like a grenade had gone off three feet from her.

Once silence finally returned to her thoughts, she took a long breath.

**_I'm listening…_**

The faint sound of laughter answered her. Had she the energy, she would have joined in.

Call it the spark of life returning, call it a thirst for freedom, call it a scientist's desire for further research in a new discovery…or even call it revenge's whisper for Maslov's private parts in a cup, courtesy a rapier…it all meant the same thing.

Irina Spalko, Enemy of the State, woman without a country, was going to kill some people.

Chapter 6: The Escape Part I coming soon.


	6. Chapter 6

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

(Note: All text appearing in **bold **is dialogue spoken in Russian translated to English.)

Chapter 6: The Escape Part 1

In order for Irina to break free, it required more than just a flashy explosion of light and color. However, given the expansion of her mental abilities, it would need less concentration. Considering death from starvation or infection of her open wounds (from constant beatings) was eminent (if the firing squad didn't finish her first), luck, if there was such a thing, was finally smiling upon her. For three days, she listened to the even-tempered whispers of her neighbor instructing in the manner by which her escape would be possible. Always having a keen interest in the paranormal, Spalko was quick to suspend her disbelief. That not typically being the definitive or for that matter _desired_ trait of a Soviet Union scientist (the upper command always operating on careful skepticism), Spalko was truly unique in her willingness to consider possibilities of beings/places/powers higher than the simple carbon based existence of humanity with little explanation or _proof_. Her uncanny mind reading abilities was proof enough of the magnitude of the great-unknown mysteries all around her.

The one thing that Spalko _couldn't_ believe at that point was how her fellow, unseen captive made no attempt at bargaining or an ultimatum regarding his own escape from there before he began parting with his secrets. Mikhail had no guarantee that she would even bother taking him with her. The extra problem of another body…one she couldn't completely control added a lot of danger. He never brought it up. Didn't he care? Had he been broken beyond any hope for his own sake and thought not to ask? Or did he think her so cold that she would just leave him. For essentially saving Irina's life he was entitled to ask her to help him in return. She may have been cold, strict, humorless, and generally unfeeling for the most part beyond a few important things in her life (one of which had been stripped from her), but she had _honor_. She was not her parents or the village that ostracized her. Furthermore, and more disheartening, if he too possessed the abilities he was teaching her to control, why hadn't he already made a daring attempt at acquiring his salvation? It made no sense. Whatever Mikhail's reasons, as Irina's powers grew stronger, she starting being more careful of her thoughts and hiding them from his heightened senses. She intended, as a coup de main to him if he had any doubts, to take him with her as far as she needed to make sure he was no longer in harm's way. It was not a matter of appreciation, affection, or anything of the sort (she felt neither), the fact remained _she owed him_. That usurped everything. To die in the debt of another was dishonorable.

On the morning of the fourth day she was ready. Before her escape attempt she stretched out across the dried out mud hole floor of her cell. Anticipation of her freedom made her jittery and a growing anxiety started to build up, her heart feeling as if it were about to explode out of chest. Before she could hope to make her move she had to calm down. _**No fear. No fear.**_

_**You'll do fine.**_

After a round in her block of ice, she was ready.

Irina closed her eyes and saw herself standing in her cell. She'd memorized every inch of it; very brick, every mound of filth, every dried patch of her vomit, the refuse, the stink of it…_everything_. In her mind's eye Spalko raised her hands up to her face. Instead of her own appendages, feminine by nature yet scarred and scuffed by her aggressive pursuits and conquests, she saw the freakishly thin digits belonging to Colonel Vektor Maslov. The torn rags that covered her body were replaced with the gaunt warden's well fitting M-1935 tunic and breeches. She…_he_ stood up, eyes still closed. Irina Spalko looked, felt, smelled, and lived the world of an older, gray-headed misogynist with nothing beyond the glory of Mind Eye's Prison and its cold walls.

_Col. Maslov_ imagined a great fog around him at the base of his ankles, enveloping _him_, extending further through the dank stockade halls. The fog connected _him_ to anyone and everyone. The fog was no more than the fleeting thread of space between two points. Every officer, enlisted man, orderly, and prisoner virtually _touched_ _him_. The colonel scrutinized the entire jailhouse for the lieutenant who'd beaten Irina Spalko, the only face she still vividly remembered aside from Maslov himself.

He was standing at the end of D Block, stationed as a sentry, a fresh bandage across his cheek. His mind was so open...so vulnerable for picking, like eggs in a basket. Everything on the seat of his pants.

"**Lieutenant!**" Lt. Fyodorov answered promptly by rushing in the voice's direction down the D bock corridor, instantly recognizing the voice of his commanding officer, Col. Maslov. Odd. Maslov was away at Moscow with Petrov and his _god transmitter_. He _had_ said it was a wild goose chase. Perhaps the colonel was back. He didn't see him. He'd certainly heard him, but he couldn't lock down where he was. Worried that he was keeping Maslov waiting he practically charged down the D Block to the other end toward E Block around the other corner and another sentinel post through an imposing (and bolted) iron hatchway. Nothing. No sign of him anywhere. "**Lieutenant!**" Again, it came from D-Block, the nicknamed 'damned block.' This time, Maslov sounded obviously irritated. "**Coming Sir!**" Once he began charging down the passageway. "**Sir! Where are you?!**"

"**In here ya idiot**." He heard it clearly coming from Spalko's cell.

"**Sir**?" He approached, his side arm drawn, a Tokarev pistol, 33 model. His face still ached from the pieces of glass that had to be picked out of it. He wasn't going to have any funny business. If Spalko was up to trickery, he was going to shoot her dead the second he saw her.

"**Hurry up! I locked myself in this damn thing.**"

"**Right sir!**" He scrambled for his set of keys and opened the door. He peered inside and as expected, Maslov stepped out of the shadows.

Irina's eyes opened and locked with his.

"_**Come in here**_**…slave**." Having made eye contact, the mental projection of Maslov was no longer necessary.

No longer in control of his own mental processes, he obeyed like a puppy dog. One foot in front of the other, he slumped forward into the cell.

"_**Sit. Don't move until I say.**_" It was like moving chess pieces around a board. Once she was sure he was no longer a danger, she swiped his pistol and walked out into the corridor. As she left the confines of the cell, the slick, cold texture of the floor stung the bottoms of her bare feet. Brushing her hair out her eyes as if it helped her weakening eyesight, she scanned the entire block. No one there at the moment. That could change. She had to be fast. The slickness of the ground didn't help the fact that her knees were so atonic and enfeebled that standing for any length of time would prove injurious. She closed the door to her room and braced her hand against the closed door and ran it along across it and the wall as she moved.

As her hands grazed the latch of her neighbor's chamber a bolt of pain seared its way through her head. _**NO!**_

_**Why not? Her confusion demanded an answer.**_

_**Leave me!**_

_**I will not be in you're debt. You are coming with me even if I have to drag you kicking and screaming out of here.**_

_**Leave me!**_

Ignoring his insane pleas, Irina pulled the latch and opened the door. There was twinge of excitement at getting the chance to see her fellow captive for the first time as she stepped inside. The mild feeling of euphoria was replaced with perplexing horror and dread. She barely noticed the working light fixture that spread light throughout his confines, the cleanliness of his enclosure, or the startling resemblance to a hospital ward. Her eyes were fixed toward the opposite wall on the lifeless piece of meat that lay motionless on a cot, an IV sticking out of what used to be a human arm, represented as a stump. As she approached him, his predicament became quite clear. The person or what remained of the person had no arms and no legs. The upper limbs ended at the shoulder while the lower ones (which was covered by clothing) likely ended at the pelvic bone. She didn't have to look under the simple cream-colored rag that was tied around his head, laid out across the entirety of his face from the top of his brow line to the bottom of his neck to guess what was under it. Nothing. No eyes, no sockets to hold them, no nose, bridge, cheekbones, jaw, nothing was under the _mask_ designed to keep infection out of the gapping hole in his head. He looked dead, like a grenade had completely disintegrated the bulk of him. He _had_ to be dead. But, he wasn't. A machine on a table nearby beeped. It had tubes running in and out of him. Life-support helped him live. _It_ was life!

For torture, Maslov had scooped out his face, probably deafened him and chopped off hunks of his body just to see how long Mikhail could live in a world of _nothingness_…

A lump began to form in her throat. It was genuinely horrifying to even be in his presence, no matter how utterly harmless he was.

Her eyes moved along his motionless form to the tattered remnants of his clothes. Olive drab. The standard in the American military.

A flood of emotions came over her. Anger, hatred, betrayal.

The one person she had found some resemblance of solace in had been nothing but an imperialistic hound trying to confuse her and tear her away from her communist beliefs. He was an _enemy_…sent to defile her, twist her and mold her into a capitalist warrior.

_We meet at last, comrade Spalko._ The seemingly inanimate psychic spoke to her in the only means he could for the first time in his native language. English

_You son of a bitch! You did this! All of this! _She shouted telepathically back in English, heavily accented even in her mind.

_Did what, Irina? _

_You tricked me! You're an American…an imperialist stooge. You did all of this to change me! You turned them against me!_

_Still clinging to the Soviet state anyway you can? You think you can find a way to pass the buck so you can prove the motherland still loves you. Wake up. _

_Bastard!_

_You know I'm right. _

_You...lied._

_Yes. I'll admit I lied. I needed you to trust me. My intentions were always pure. I just wanted to get you out of here._

_I don't understand! Why?!_

_There is something about you everyone fears. You wondered why you've been shunned and rejected...prosecuted your whole life. It's because you represent something._

_What?_

_Proof. Your gift. You're living proof that that there is something greater on this earth than the mere trifles that is human life. That's terrifying to the ordinary. It's their nature to try and destroy you, even the Soviet Union. Sure, they thought if you could be controlled for their own purposes, that it would work to their advantage. But now that you can no longer bend to that will, whether by your own choice or from somewhere else, you've been put back on the outside to be hated and feared. _

_How…can I ever trust anything you say…your…_

_An America? I'm a man first. I'm more than the flag I carry, remember. Besides, who do you think dumped me here? You think the Soviet Union is the only nation out to rule the world? _

_Who are you?_

_Major Michael Pierce. My ability…remote viewing…astral projection…whatever…first developed during this last war to end all wars while on assignment for the OSI. It happened by accident…the exact details of how I came to have them is at this point irrelevant. My C.O. got wind of it and tried to whore me to the war effort to control the will of men in not so friendly nations. Well, for me, controlling another person, evil or not, didn't jive with everything I'd been programmed to believe in by the wholesome society we...the American Secret Service and others…perpetuated. I refused. Well…we were friendly with the re…Soviets at the time…do the math. Believe me. I hold no allegiance to any country. _

_Why didn't you just do as you were told? _She scolded him. True his decision to help in U.S. mind control projects could have put a damper on her plans in the STD, but she was still hard pressed to disregard the years of training that had taught her strict loyalty to the chain of command in all people.

I didn't think it was right. That was enough in my book. What I set out to do with you was to make you understand that no nation, no government deserves your allegiance if you, Irina Spalko, are searching for truth...the meaning of your existence. They already tried giving their take on truth to you. Apparently it didn't jive with you either. Let it go.

_What do I do now?_

_Go. Live. Find your damned truth that keeps alluding you...anywhere it takes ya. _

For the first time Spalko didn't argue. Yes. That had been a constant in her life. Knowing _why she was_ had always lingered on her mind. Only until then did she realize how sidetracked she'd become by her duties to the Union. Yes, she would forever be a communist...until the she died, but she no longer put her faith in the easily corrupted structures of simple mammals. Her singular purpose was the why..._why_. And she knew where to start. Her dreams…but first…Maslov.

_I'm leaving…I've wasted too much time…thank you_. Though not actually saying the spoken word her tongue experienced the sharp pain of humble gratitude.

Could you do me a favor Irina…

_What's that?_

_Kill me._

…………………………………………….

She sat on the cot with him until it was over. As the life-support machine silenced, she cradled Mike, his forehead tucked into her bosom, one arm wrapped around the back of his head, the other around his torso for the sake of his final sensations in life not being painful and cruel. Irina's was not a gentile woman, but despite her best effort to remain unhinged, she couldn't keep herself from giving a damn. She allowed him the death he was owed. He'd earned it just by surviving Maslov's venom that long…and saving her life without condition.

It couldn't have been more than a minute. He was gone.

_Maslov will be joining you soon my friend, _she thought, now only to herself, but in the birth language of a fallen comradewho somewhere could still be listening.

She laid him flat on the cot and tried to straighten out his ripped clothes. His shirt pocket had something in it. She removed the object. It was a tattered picture of a woman standing in front of a quaint American house, a small female child in her arms. She stuffed it into her own britches pouch and steadily, purposefully, exited the cell, never looking back. Irina checked the pistol. It was in good working order. _Ah, Motherland. Always in good stead. _

Outside all seemed quiet still. She hadn't aroused any suspicions yet. Once again using her newly attained mental powers over the wills of men, she opened her own former lodgings back up.

"**Slave. Get up.**"

NEXT CHAPTER: THE ESCAPE PART II


	7. Chapter 7

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

(Note: All text appearing in **bold **is dialogue spoken in Russian translated to English.)

Chapter 7: The Escape, Part 2

Getting through the sentry stations was incredibly easy. As her _slave_ lead her, Irina used her mental projection of Maslov to salute the troopers she came in contact with, convincing them she was the ever-menacing warden of Mind's Eye Prison. There didn't seem to be an abundance of commandos about. It was odd for there not to be a strong military presence in the hallways at all times.

"**Slave, where are all the men? Shouldn't there be regular patrols?**"

"**Temporary C.O. Major ****Chekhov**** is reviewing a bulk number of the troops until eleven hundred hours in the missile defense yard.**"

_**Hah, no doubt eating up the limited time he has as commanding officer while Maslov is away. Damn fool. There is no room for personal pride in the Union! There is only the pride of the motherland. **_Though she could no longer call herself the loyal servant of mother Russia, she still carried with her a great sense of national pride even if her growing intentions were to make the nation…and Maslov…choke on it.

It was well within her powers as it had been before the Crystal Skull Mission to simply pull information out of Fyodorov, but there was something satisfying about listening to the droll and submissive way in which he answered her. Apparently mind control didn't bring out the brightest in the host at least where her power limits were concerned. The lieutenant's responses were sloppy and sometimes difficult to understand as if his tongue were too heavy for him to contend with anymore. His eyelids were saggy and dead. She recalled being sent to East Berlin a few years before on administrative assignment because the locals claimed they'd discovered 'top secret American secrets' in a crate left behind after the Potsdam Conference. Under heavy guard inside a temporary Soviet Bunker, she opened the crate alongside Andrey Chamov, the commandant at the time, discovering film reels and a projector, no doubt U.S. secrets. Upon playing them, they were greeted with a batch of American cartoons, one of them Droopy, starring in Caballero Droopy. A smirk stretched across her face. Fyodorov reminded her of the slow, monotone, epically lethargic dog.

"**I shall call you Droopy, slave.**"

"**Very…good.**" A drool ran off his bottom lip when he spoke, no longer able to control his bodily functions. Slowly, they were slipping farther and farther out of his grasp.

It was time to get the obvious questions out of the way, I.E. find out where she could get transportation out and where the hell Maslov had gone. As Irina and her _slave_ walked along the dimly lit corridors toward the impound sector where her uniform and rapier awaited the former colonel, her grilling of the officer for information was more like a programmed Q&A session than an interrogation. Her power over his mind saw to that.

"**Slave, where is Col. Maslov.**"

"**In Moscow…**"

"**Damn it.**" A straight on attack in the Soviet capitol would be a difficult option. Sooner or later though…she'd have him. But, before she could do so she needed to recuperate. There had to be _life _nearby. She prayed that the area was not completely remote.

"**Where are we?**"

"**Mind's Eye Prison…for the freaks… in the ****Kuril Islands**** …**** Matua Island ****specifically…built into the living mountain.**"

"**In the volcano?!**" She'd never been informed of any such prison. What else didn't she know about the Science and Technology Directorate, a program she'd been completely committed to.

"**How long has the Soviet Union been stockpiling paranormally…advanced people?**"

He didn't know.

"**I have to find the nearest settlement.**"

"**At the bottom of the mountain there a small village. It has a small shipping dock where outsiders barter goods with the villagers and the Soviet troops when they come through.**"

"**I need transportation. A truck would be excellent.**"

"**There are trucks in the hanger.**"

She canned the chatter when they arrived at the impound. A single guard sat behind a desk overlooking the reams of boxes of confiscated possessions, all likely the property of the prisoners. He too quickly fell under her hypnotic grip. Irina took a duffel bag and stuffed her gimnasterka, gloves, boots, rapier, etc inside. She didn't change out of her tattered clothes just yet. She was in a hurry and wanted the hell out of there as quickly possible. She'd served her time in hell.

She eyed a belt equipped with four grenades and a holster. They'd definitely come in handy. She strapped it around her waist and holstered Droopy's pistol. She threw the bag over her shoulder and the weight of it on her fatigued body immediately made her dizzy.

Outside the impound as they made there way for the hanger, a sudden contraction in her stomach rocked her to the point of chills causing her to hack up a hunk of blood into her hand.

"**Spalko!**" Droopy's eyes came alive again and he lunged for her. She concentrated harder. He had just managed to get his fist ready for flight when he sagged back into his trance once more. Irina's powers were wreaking havoc on her malnourished body. She needed to move…fast. She wouldn't be able to keep it up for more than a few more minutes if she wanted to survive.

At the hanger, the duo hid behind a stack of military pallets, possibly awaiting transportation in three covered panel trucks that lined the snow just outside the open hanger doors. Across from Spalko and her slave, were loads of enlisted men moving crates around the hanger, near the doors, her only way out. It only took her a moment to decide what to do. She waited for about twenty minutes as they finished up and began heading back, as a group, in her direction, likely where she'd come from, back into the facility. She removed a grenade from her belt. _**Three left.**_

"**Slave. Take this. I want to you to stand up, pull the pin off this grenade, stuff it in your mouth, and run toward your comrades over there.**"

Step by step, he followed her directions. She waited for him to get close enough to troopers. At first they didn't realize what he was doing. They must have assumed he was coming to give them urgent information. _**Indeed, he is. **_The second he touched them, she stood and took off toward the open air and a truck she'd picked out. The explosion and rain of blood and body parts upset her balance and she tripped, her bare feet sending her sliding in the snow face first. Luckily, she fell against the hood of her destination. The sudden exertion was dire to her constitution, causing a dazzling spray of pain. As Irina pushed off the hood of the truck she could see a thick line of blood on it that wasn't part of her little distraction. Spalko dabbed her face and discovered the trail leading into her nose. She retched, her world became lightheaded.

An officer, dressed in heavy coat and goggles for the severe winter, from outside patrol, arrived by sled into the hanger just two arm's lengths away from her, being pulled by Siberian Husky sled dogs. He spotted her and started toward the target.

_**Come on Come on!**_

She could hear the array of boots rushing toward her. The distraction was over. Sounded like at least sixteen men coming…coming...coming.

She swung the door open and threw herself inside. Goggle man grabbed her ankles before she could pull her feet into the truck and he started yanking her out. Unable to hold onto the seat, virtual out of any real strength, she was nothing more than a rag doll. Before he had her all the way out, she grabbed onto the steering wheel and turned the ignition. The truck roared to life. Her assailant grabbed her ripped up collar dead set on yanking her out the rest of the way. She let go and as her head went across the driver seat she pulled out her gun and shot goggle man right in the groan. She stood up and pistol-whipped him. He fell backward into the sled, alerting the dogs and sending them ruining, straight into the hanger. Thinking quickly she sacrificed another grenade, chucking it into the sled as it rushed into the gathering of troops headed straight at her now only a few meters away. _**Two Left**_.

"Do svidania!" She gave them a weak wave…and _another, _morepungent international sign.

She didn't wait for the explosion. She darted inside and hit the accelerator.

She followed the crude extra wide road cut out of snow, her vision steadily getting weaker, the blood rain from her nose staining more and more of the raggy clothes she wore on her back.

She knew better than to think Soviet forces would be so easily discouraged in her recapture. Even as she veered down the niveous mountain, she could feel them already in hot pursuit. Irina's fears were finally confirmed when she saw a covered truck like her own in her rearview mirror. She leaned across the passenger seat and checked the other mirror. Another was coming up to box her in. Against her better judgment she eased off the pedal. If she were going to escape the island she couldn't have anyone _that_ hot on her trail. Spalko would have to tear them down. She couldn't out run them like this. She grabbed her rapier out of the duffel bag and clipped it's sheath on the grenade belt, then tied up the bag's contents, and pulled her head over the strap and fastened it across her torso. She rolled down her window and prepared to make her move. The passenger in the in other truck broke through his window with the butt of his AK and Spalko met him with a grenade right into his cabin before she tucked her head down as he opened fire.

_BOOM!_

_**One truck down. One Grenade left.**_

_Clank clank._

She had company on top. After locking the vehicle into a constant state of acceleration, Irina positioned herself toward the passenger window as the other truck evened off with hers. She suck her arms out the driver side window and using the railing on top of the door hoisted herself out on onto the canopy. Two unformed Soviets were standing one in front of the other posed and ready for her. The first one-stepped forward drawing his pistol. The whipping winds of the ever-accelerating truck threw his severed hand behind them. It slapped up against the windshield of the other vehicle, that when seeing Irina crawl out on top of her cabin, had repositioned behind Spalko's truck and was now ramming it to throw her and their fellow troopers off.

Her bloody rapier quickly silenced the man's screams as it swayed through his throat. The spray of blood covered his partner who used her attack to take advantage by lunging at her. The commando tackled her, sending Spalko flat onto her back. Her rapier stabbed itself into the canopy. The thug who had his throat slashed fell backwards, succumbing to the increasing g forces and smashed into the perusing vehicle's windshield, lowing them down. It took them a while, but they rolled his body off.

Spalkos attacker kneeled down on her and started punching her in the face repetitiously. The other truck had pulled up again, this time along the left side and was ramming Spalko's toward the drop off on the other side. The road was getting narrower by the second. She had to time it right. As the Soviet pulled his fist back and the other truck veered away readying another ram attempt she ripped out her pistol and squeezed the trigger.

_Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!_

Blood gushed onto her in a wild spray. She shoved him off, holstered the weapon, grabbed her rapier, and tugged it out. She was just getting to her feet as the truck moved to hit again. As the enemy vehicle rammed one final time she leapt onto its canopy as her previous ride veered off into oblivion. She crawled over to the drive side and peered over the side at the door handle as she carefully replaced her sword. Her breath was stiff. Her heart was beating inhibited, restrained…she rolled over on her back and froze. She was dieing. There was nothing left in her tank.

The truck's passenger had noticed her daring leap and had crawled out to dispatch her. It didn't matter. Irina was done. His boisterous laugh echoed like it was miles away because of the rapid gusts. He stood up straight, feeling the need to savor a victory that would earn him so many medals he'd ever be able to stand when they were around his neck. He pressed his boot down on her neck and started strangling her.

It had been a valiant effort. But Spalko would never…ever make it out alive. She was a fool for ever thinking so. Her life was at an end.

In what could only be her last moment of life her eyes rolled upward involuntarily as her brain started suffocating…shutting down. Her head rolled from side to side, seeing the mountain road whip past her at lightening speed. The last image she saw was…a tunnel…a long tunnel rushing to meet her…

…and the soviet solider. He didn't duck down in time. The tunnel was only built to clear the truck plus three, maybe four more additional feet. Spalko could hear his skull shatter as it slammed into solid granite at eighty miles an hour.

Air filled her lungs. The sudden pull from the brink of death shot her adrenaline through the roof. She rolled back over.

She smashed, bare foot first in through the driver window, knocking the operator over into the passenger side. Irina unveiled her pistol, raising it to eye level to finish him off.

_Click!_

He batted the gun away and clobbered her abdomen, then her shoulder and fought for control of the wheel. The truck went back and forth… back and forth…back and forth…

The driver side door came open, Spalko slumping onto her back, her head sticking out of the cabin. The driver was on top of her now, his midsection pressed against her chest, one arm wrapped around her throat, asphyxiating her, the other on the wheel. With her last bit of fortitude she pulled the pin on the last grenade and stuffed it into the front of his pants. Frantic, he let go of her and rummaged around in vein. Using his own weight against him, she grabbed hold of his collar, pressed her feet against his stomach and rolled him over her head and out.

She sat up just as a passing tree took the door off the hinges, nearly scalping her.

Moments later she saw the village and shipping dock, occupied by a vessel, on the horizon.

The truck came as no surprise to anyone. A Soviet presence was no big deal. Irina sighed in relief at the familiar sights she recognized from her own village as a child. The people out in the fresh market and herders moving their livestock were all a welcoming home to her. She pulled up to the docking bay area near the ship where a bunch of boxes awaiting loading sat undisturbed and away from the normal goings on. Irina slunk out of truck, duffle bag in hand, dead set on stowing aboard…going…wherever...except back.

……………………………………

"Hey! You!" The ship's first mate shook her awake in the dank cargo hold where she had curled up hidden among equipment and crates full of cigarettes.

"Who are you?" Another man said in English, sporting a Liberian accent. He shined a flashlight in her bruised face, illuminating it against the shadows. He was wearing a captain's hat with an eagle on it.

"Please don't…" she no longer had the energy to speak.

"What are you thinking coming aboard on my ship in this state of disrepair..."

"I nee—"

"…and not asking for help."

"What? Please don't …"

"Hush. You're not the first woman to travel with us. My cabin is yours."

When he saw the beaten and battered woman suffering in a fitful sleep in his cargo hold, the captain of the Bantu Wind, always a descent man to those lost at sea or seeking sanctuary ignored any possible threat the woman might have been to him. After all, he might have been a pirate, but Simon Katanga was no monster.

Next Chapter: Chapter 8: Better, Stronger, Faster


	8. Chapter 8

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

(Note: All text appearing in **bold** is dialogue spoken in Russian translated to English.)

Chapter 8: Better, Stronger, Faster

No matter how hard Irina swung, the rapier would not pierce their bodies. Omnipotence was not something she, in her limitations in brute force, could ever over come, and the fact that no person could ever interfere in recovered memories, even if they were experiencing them for the very first time. Every time she lunged into the beckon of blinding light she saw only the treasure chest in place of the _spacemen_, and every time she came back out, her double's face was in a further state of disfiguration. When Irina finally gave up her display in futility the skin had pealed back on the mirror image that lay strapped on the table. A scorched skull and patches of what was once a bob hair cut scattered about its crown was all that was left of the proud soviet. She'd stopped screaming. Just bellow the fowl sound of sizzling flesh, her weak moans overlapped.

In an instant the light was gone. Still hand in hand in their crystal form, the spacemen held council over the mound of organic matter not yet a corpse. She could feel them…beyond the three she saw. The essence of the thirteen surrounded her in judgment.

They spoke to her in her native language of Russian.

"**You who have reunited **_**the thirteen**_** have done so with ill intent. The purpose of **_**the thirteen **_**was to aide humanity when the time came to pull it from great crisis the likes of which it never seen, not to propagate a man made ideology to rule over the species.**

**We have seen into your essence and seen the way you have treated the lives of your fellow humans…like a worthless commodity.**

**Our first instinct was to annihilate you…however we will give you something that is beyond your own reach to give…mercy**

**Countless have suffered…because you…how many more must do so?**

**We have given you their pain…and the fragment of your soul that was missing to feel it **

**You have thrust upon your life a great…chance…a penance. Your chains will be broken…ignorance and greed…no longer will you be bound by them**."

Irina sat up on her cot. A cold layer of sweat had formed against her nude body during her fitful nightmare. For weeks it had been the same dream. Resting, the key element of recuperation, had been a daunting task. The swaying of the vessel on the open ocean did not help her disposition either. She couldn't complain. She was alive.

Every night she'd find herself answering for her crimes before an alien panel of judges. They spoke of her evils against the human race. It flared her up to no end. Who the hell were they to dismiss her as a base animal? Was she to abandon communism for the capitalist balderdash? Were the imperialists not also responsible for their own crimes? She was a communist to the very end…wasn't she?

_More than the flag you carry._

She remembered Pierce. Even in death, his words defeated her angry rants at nothingness and aliens she wasn't even sure weren't figments of a madwoman's damaged brain.

Spalko had been aboard the Bantu Wind for around two months. Her wounds had healed, her weight was up to normal, and most importantly, she was back to her normal exercise routines. She was no slouch aboard the smuggler ship either. She pulled her weight on par with any of the men, whom many eyed her more than just a little curiously dressed in the clothes given to her, a tank top for a man two sizes bigger than she, the neck of it revealing quite a bit of her natural form, hefty slacks and her knee high soviet issue boots. Katanga offered her a set of lavender colored gowns, simple by design but thoughtful, for her to wear, proving she was indeed not the first woman to travel with them. However, she insisted she be given a set of clothes that were appropriate for the duties Irina demanded she be apart of. She loaded and unloaded their goods when they went to port, bargained what they had to sell, provided muscle against troublemakers, etc. All part of paying her debt to them, a payment no one asked her for. No member of the ship ever laughed at Spalko or labeled her the little woman trying to do a man's job. In fact they worked just to keep up with her strict discipline of work ethic. It was something to be admired and they did so. At night she would smoke and drink and play cards with them in the ship's belly like one of them. She was no more different. Just another shipmate.

She was still of course, a woman. The crew definitely saw fit to get an eyeful of her when she would work out on deck. They'd set up tables a respectful distance away but in full view of her and pretend to gamble with dice and cards just to see her sweat glistened hair sticky against her face as she did her sit-ups. Irina never questioned it. As long as they looked and didn't touch everything would be copasetic.

Unlike the rest of the crew, she was given private quarters. Likely the work of Katanga. She had picked out thoughts in his mind. His feelings were very clear to her. But he knew nothing could come of it. So did she.

When she could sleep, she tried, only to be awakened by the same memories she'd lost rushing into her consciousness, reminding her of how terrible she was.

After kicking the hot uncomfortable covers off her unclothed frame Irina fell back onto her pillow, her supple breasts, not willing to completely submit to gravity, were bathed in the moonlight coming in from the porthole. Irina was common to sleeping without any clothes. They often made her stiff and slightly constrained in slumber. Also, while she did not admit it, the act gave her a measure of sexuality, standing in for her lack of intimate relationships and the butch perceptive toward her among her fellow countrymen in the red army and her shipmates. She was an object; a killing machine with no remorse and nothing could define her as woman with desires of her own…for a long time she chose to believe it. Something had to serve the basic carnal needs of every person. Sleeping naked was a poor substitute but it would do.

She tossed and turned for at least twenty minutes. Her adrenaline had been aroused by her nightmare and showed no signs of subsiding.

She cursed to herself. There would be no chance of returning to hibernation.

Irina dressed herself in her tank top and slacks, eyeing her neatly folded soviet uniform on a makeshift dresser while she did so. She hadn't worn it in what seemed like ages. It didn't feel right. She was no longer an officer in the union. In time…perhaps.

Next to her uniform was the tattered picture of the woman and her child, taken from Pierce's corpse. She'd grown oddly attached to it. For some reason Irina felt connected to them. Some nights she sat awake in bed just staring at it, wondering who they were. Wife and daughter probably. Their father wasn't ever coming home...and they were still holding out for some hope, Irina assumed. He was listed MIA by any estimation. MIA meant missing not dead. They would wonder forever were Michael was. An unseen hand propelled her toward the unnamed family.

She snatched up her rapier.

**_Maslov…if I ever get my hands on you…_**

On the moonlit deck, her rapier nearby, Irina dropped down and started doing push ups. If she wasn't going to sleep she would condition herself for the chance…the day, should ever have come, to kill Maslov. It was a consuming thought, like so many of hers those days. She was so enveloped in the thought of ridding the world of that greasy son of a bitch that she almost didn't hear the creek. Almost didn't. Old boats made all kinds of sounds. None quite like the sound of a troublesome night stalker approaching its prey.

"Spalko."

"Katanga." She replied evenly, shifting to a seated position for crunches. "You've been standing there a while. No, I vill not join you in your cabin tonight." She hated dashing his hopes of female companionship. However it would have been wrong to ever lead him on. Almost since she got there, she'd felt his thoughts toward her. He meant no ill will and the attraction was above just a physical desire, but it could not be. Though, she was indeed flattered by it.

" I wasn't going to suggest—"

"Don't lie. Surely you didn't come to bother me just because of some ill-conceived crush. I told you, my dear captain. I know things before anybody else."

There was a pause.

"Do you think—"

"Under different circumstances…yes. But—"

"You aren't that kind of girl."

"Yes. I have…other plans."

"Yeah."

"We have a problem. The engines have stopped Captain…Something's wrong." As if she didn't already know. _They _were coming for her. Enemies of the state must be pursued to the ends of the earth.

NEXT CHAPTER: MEETING MR. X coming soon.


	9. Chapter 9

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

(Note: All text appearing in **bold** is dialogue spoken in Russian translated to English.)

Chapter 9: Meeting Mr. X

Moments after Irina's psychic revelation of trouble afoot, the Bantu wind was hailed on its communication radio through VLF (very low frequency.) The first mate appeared bewildered when he rushed onto the deck to inform his captain of the lurking underwater vessel only to have Katanga already proclaim awareness of certain danger. Casting Spalko, her hands behind her head in the midst of a knee lift completely unobservant and unafraid as to the submarine's purpose, he accompanied his crewmember into the radio command center, hardily a military class com, a dank and sweaty, rusty berthing, but it served its purpose. Static and white noise was broken by a stern and orderly voice in Russian.

"**Surrender Enemy of the State Irina Spalko into the hands of our Soviet vessel or be annihilated. Prepare to be boarded by servants of the Red Army**."

The message was repeated three times. Strange to both Katanga and his first mate was the way in which the sub's status as a soviet servant was over promoted. Something stank to high heaven.

Returning to the deck, Katanga eyed the sail of the submarine with his binoculars. In naval talk, the sail of a sub is the tower located on the topside, housing the command and communications data center, known as the conning tower. The sun had just begun ascending on the horizon, giving the world-weary smuggler a fairly decent look at the hull. It was long, about three hundred and eleven feet or ninety meters. Odd. They had been ordered around in Russian, but if he didn't know better he'd say it was…

"It's American." Spalko announced, having left her exercises and retrieved her duffle bag with her personal effects. "Tench class. They're hailing you under a Russian disguise. They don't think you or I are intelligent enough to realize the façade. Or they just don't care. Typical Americans. Everybody's stupid except them."

Katanga discarded his binoculars carelessly and clinched his fist. "We have weapons, we could—"

"Fight bravely and die quickly. I'm flattered. I've already paid my debt to you. Don't put me in another I can only replay with flowers and a eulogy." She threw her duffel bag over her shoulder and snatched up her rapier that lay inattentively on the deck. "I'll go with them."

"They'll kill you." Katanga was visibly shaken by her coolness in the face of assured destruction. She wasn't just another pretty face that would come and go. Despite barely communicating during her stay, the seaman had grown fond of the beautiful woman who did everything in her power to deny that very fact.

"Probably." She could sense every laborious thought running through his head. She even could swear to feel the faintest hint of the lump forming in his throat.

"Mother Russia teaches one to be prepared and willing to die at a moment's notice. I am. I've learned something recently. One person who is willing to die may do so, but cannot possibly expect that of any other for any reason…ideological or patriotic included. There might be a court high above any in the imperialistic United States or the Communistic Soviet Union…Whether it be God…or the Emperors of the Sun… that will hold me accountable if I ask you to die for me here." Irina remembered her reoccurring dream of the spacemen and their impromptu tribunal.

She smirked. "Besides, I'm sure I can take a few of them with me before it's all over."

"Goodbye, Irina," he sighed.

"Goodbye Simon."

Little did Spalko know, she, in finally understanding that the fanaticism that drove her to kill so many had damned her, Irina had taken the first step toward freeing herself.

………………………………….

Irina sat before a sleek metal table before an agitated looking submarine captain in a prisoner quarters. His face looked like it had been deflated by time and he was the size of at least two men, busting out of his dark naval coat. Spalko studied his face as her fingers ran the length of her handcuffs. She paid no attention to the charges he was reading or to her rapier and personal effects dropped foolishly within a few feet of her, but rather she plucked around his mind. Not much in there but a severe loyalty to the American way, the recently passed away Joe McCarthy, and a unparalleled hatred of _commie scum_.

Her leg tugged at the chain that locked her to the table, which had been bolted down.

As much as she expected, she was to die after a long and healthy prison sentence, likely just long enough to get whatever secrets they could out of her. She withheld a grunt. She'd just come out incarceration two months ago. Couldn't they just be civilized and put a bullet in the back of her head right then and there.

As the Captain stood to leave, a crewman opened the creaky, hollow door and entered, closing it behind him. The much older man looked genuinely surprised to be interrupted. A whispered conversation ensued

"What?" The Sub Captain pulled off his hat and brushed sweat off his brow as he tried to wrap his mind around the information coming at him.

The glittery crewmember, a wet behind the ears rookie, repeated the message. "Radio transmission from the Pentagon has come in sir. It says we are to await the _immediate_ arrival of a special agent to interrogate the prisoner…"

"You bonehead. That's got to be some red trick trying to get her back in their—"

"Sir. It checks out. Straight from…mother…sir."

Overhearing the conversation, Spalko immediately recognized the codename of James Jesus Angleton, Chief of the CIA's Counterintelligence department. He was a chain smoking workaholic who'd established himself as a dangerous Intel foe to the Soviet Union. Luckily for Russia, British Intelligence member, MI6 liaison, Harold Adrian Russell Philby, a close _friend _of Angleton, was at that very moment a KGB mole, sucking information right out of Angleton's office (and out of his own mouth) right under his nose.

What did _Mother_ want with her?

Angleton's interest in psychic warfare was no secret.

"From mother?" The sub captain was even less enthusiastic than before. "Great…and how exactly are we going to receive this special agent _immediately_ when we're in the middle of the North Pacific?"

As if on cue…

_Knock knock_

The crewman diligently and swiftly opened the door. Before them stood a statuesque, more suitably gangling**,** Caucasian man who couldn't have been bigger around than a flagpole. He wore a black suit, tie, and a white collar shirt. Covering his hairless head was a black soft felt wide brimmed fedora.

Still chained to the table, Spalko strained to see the face of the man who had just presented himself. Small circular orbs, sunglasses, making it impossible to get a completely educated grasp of where he might hail from, covered his eyes. The lines on his face suggested he was in his late forties. Beyond that, his expression and facial features were blank and did not resemble that of any person from any nation or region. In that bizarre realization, she completely understood his presence.

He spoke without recognizable accent or colloquialism. "My ID tag is B I G B R O 4 7 9 3 8 4 5. Please have that checked in your onboard computer. Leave us, if you would please, Capt. Wilcox." He entered the quarters, the orbs now fixed on Spalko, snatching her profile.

No seafaring man would have his privates stepped on by a stiff suit. Wilcox challenged the new authority figure. "Let's see some identification, ya little prick. You can just waltz about my ship."

"I do not carry identification with me. Memorize the phrase I gave you and check it in your onboard computer." He sat himself where the Captain had been, across from Irina.

"Don't you give me orders you son of a bitch."

"I do not want to have to tell you once more."

"Or you'll do what…call mommy?"

"Yes…and inform _Mother_ that I had to shoot you dead, making Mrs. Sara Wilcox a widow and Sally and Amanda Wilcox fatherless because you were interfering in this interrogation. Get out. Lock it." He never looked away from Spalko.

The door closed behind Capt. Wilcox and the crewman. The lock slid into place.

Once sure they were alone, he dropped the profile on Spalko into the trashcan and revealed from his pocket a set of matches. He addressed the prisoner as the only existing U.S. file on Irina Spalko burned.

"As you can see, we've taken great measures in getting you into U.S. custody."

"Yes, Mister…John Doe is it…or perhaps John Smith?" Irina smirked at a sworn imperial enemy. For as crafty as she and her former comrades in the KBG had been, this…person and all of his buddies were just one step farther along on the road of lethal cunning.

He was everyone and no one.

A true man in black in the Central Intelligence Agency.

He began," I do not usually carry a label—"

"Of course not. That vould make you human."

"If it makes you comfortable, you may call me X."

Next Chapter: Mission from Mother coming soon.


	10. Chapter 10

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

(**Bold **text is translated from Russian to English)

Chapter 10: Mission from Mother

X, as he called himself, wasted little time in getting to business. Like his superiors, he was a tight ass bound by directness, logic, and the utmost serious mind. He was representing his country and maybe something beyond that…not the American people, honor, patriotism, or anything that simpering. The American people were disillusioned to put the CIA on such a holy pedestal as actually giving a damn. Control was the real issue and how much the CIA and their masters could exhibit onto their people. The only difference between Soviet Russia and Capitalist United States was how much better the U.S. could hide its darker side. It was as old as the earth itself. Keep the people down while a select few bask in the almighty success and fabricate wars and mass illusions to keep them scattered and fearful. But also, make sure your enemies never gain the power you have. That meant extending a gentile pardoning arm across enemy lines to those who would aide in shifting power back into its rightful place…American hands. That is what brought X to Irina Spalko, who'd no doubt be looking for revenge against her superiors. With her training and psychic abilities, she was perfect. All that was left was making the deal.

"Spalko," his voice was already hoarse from disuse, but still even and cold. "Though my duties vary, on this mission I am representing the United States as a Counterintelligence agent under direct orders from—"

"James Jesus Angleton," Irina finished for him.

"That's right…" He paused. "Odd. Someone in your position would have had that information kept from you."

"Hard to do around a mind reader, Mr. X." Her accent always got heavier when she spoke with representatives of the imperials. It was a like a badge of honor she wore when forced to speak their language.

She spoke of the ease by which she read minds, especially after being reconstructed into physical existence, however the deep stare of her pale blue eyes could not penetrate the icy glare of the dual black pools that mirrored her image back at her. It was if his sunglasses masked something. There was more to this agent than met the eye. There was no doubt in her mind that she couldn't read his for a reason. Whatever the reason, it presented a terrifying concept. He was a loyal servant of the CIA, no question. That meant their powers in the metaphysical were growing. He could block telepathy. She felt a brief twinge of fear in X's presence. Just what the hell _was_ he and what could he mean to the Union. She held back a sigh, once again realizing her loyalty and devotion to a people and government that had betrayed her. When was she to understand that? Would she go through life forgetting it, having the sad and undeniable truth dawning on her every time she stood face to face with a man named with a letter?

X's voice interrupted her lament. "Indeed. That must be why they put you away."

"Vhat?"

"Your inability to stay in your own thoughts…they mistrusted you…and with things as they are…they had no choice but to be rid of you."

"Things as they are?"

"Changing…May I continue, Colonel?"

Irina didn't even bothered to ask how he'd come into the information about her capture and incarceration at Mind's Eye prison. Just as asking how X had suddenly materialized on a submarine in the North Pacific, it would be stupid to do so. There were ways and that's exactly what he would say, being sure never to reveal how on the grounds of natural security or some other kind of wash.

She nodded.

"We want you to help us, Spalko."

"Hah!"

"We'll…kill you if you don't."

"I'm prepared to die, X."

"We know. Which is why I'm going to…sweeten the pot, so to speak." From his inside coat pocket he revealed a pale folder and dropped it on the table. Irina didn't bother to open it. She wasn't interested in assisting X or the pigs that held his leash.

"I suggest you open it. Col. Ivan Petrov is involved…along with Col. Vektor Maslov."

Her eyes narrowed.

"Yes. Revenge is the best soothsayer for your kind," he said satisfyingly.

"And yours too." Irina was ready to have the last word always. "Vhy me?"

"Because Henry Jones isn't available at the moment. Given his history on this matter, I would much rather be talking with him now than you."

_**To hell with that,**_ she thought. _**Anything that greasy old man can do, I can do better**_. Irina's hand came down heavy onto the folder's cover and tore it as she flipped it open. Her eyes scanned through the page as X repeated their contents perhaps only to confirm everything vocally so nothing went unnoticed.

"In 1936, Henry Jones, under orders from U.S. Military Intelligence, went deep into the Egyptian desert to the lost city of Tanis where a Nazi dig was underway to discover the Ark of the Covenant. After changing hands at least three times and being opened to epic disaster at a secret Nazi U-boat base, Jones managed to bring the Ark into U.S. custody where it rested in Hanger 51 until…Soviet forces captured it under commanding officer Irina Spalko…"

"I did no such thing!" She glared at X.

"We know. It was originally collateral picked on the mission after the Soviets initiative to find you. Now—"

Spalko chimed in again to finish his sentence. "The Union now dwarfs your power and you want me to go bring it back for you. Vhy do you think I'd do that? Yes, they dishonored and betrayed me, but you...people are my still enemy forever. I vill die before I help you."

Not wanting to look at him, Irina hastily turned the page in the folder to give her something to stare at besides her own darkened reflection. The folder fell out of her hands onto the table spilling out its contents. Her gaze was fixed on an artist sketch of the ark, black stencil against white paper. The paper was slick and shiny. It was not the original. It was a laminated copy.

The treasure chest of her dreams…

Observing her curiously, X explained it. "The Ark was not photographable. All pictures showed up with a giant blur of light in its place. We had an artist draw up an accurate rendering of it. He has cataracts now."

It was a sign…

"We're dealing with a dangerous weapon. They've already tried to contain it with experimental trials on Russian civilians in villages around the country. We believe they're trying to…communicate with the...spirits. All exposed to these openings of the ark have bared resemblance to these fellows here." X brushed away the artist's pictures down to the other contents scattered underneath. Snapshots of a melted corpse, calcified into a standing position. It wore a black fedora not unlike X's and had small eyeglasses, half melted into the singed skull. Irina had a sudden flash of one her dreams, her face melted off, locked into the operating chair of the spacemen.

X continued. "I would think you'd like to keep them from hurting your own people. Have you no patro—"

"I vill help." She had to find it. It was the Ark that had enveloped her dreams. The spacemen. They had told her in their own unique way to find it, a religious artifact…why. Spalko had to find it. _I vant to know!_

"Good." X did not understand her sudden change in mind. He didn't care either. All that mattered was the mission. "Welcome to Operation God Transmitter. In doing this, you will be off the hook for any doings you participated in or perpetrated that might have been in conflict with the United States. A free woman."

"What assurances do I have that you'll keep your word, pig?"

X sighed. "My word is sufficient."

"Which means nothing to me. It is not the first time I've had the word of a pig."

As if stirred finally to be forthcoming outside his normal range, X spoke more frankly.

"Times are changing, Spalko. The old days of digging up the past for boogiemen and curses to destroy a great enemy is coming to a close, so to are the old games of cat and mouse. To the Union, you and your ability represented the old days, which is why they turned on you. Our countries don't care anymore about the falsehoods of ancient powers. Our Intel has discovered that Petrov, the head of this Ark research has zero support from on high, even from Maslov. If it weren't for Petrov's reputation, he wouldn't be allowed to waste Soviet time. The new era is about technology…that is where the future lies…its all about the future now."

"Bullshit," she snapped. "The Union vill pursue all options deemed necessary."

"Oh? Yet the Sputnik project continues right along. Your own country sees the true goldmine now. The space race will even end in their favor."

Defeated, Irina took one final jab at X. "You still didn't answer me. Your word—"

"Killing you after this mission would be fruitless. Times change. Now, when we kill somebody, it is for a purpose. The definition of collateral damage is different than it used to be. Be satisfied with the possibility of freedom."

What other choice did she have? She was going after the Ark and Maslov. She'd finally have an answer to the new mystery in her life. Why had the aliens spared her? And she'd have a chance at that misogynistic bastard.

After getting unchained and her personal effects together, X informed her that she would be having new quarters given to her as a collaborator in U.S. service. The title stung her ears.

As they walked along the halls of the submarine, Irina carried her duffle bag over one shoulder and eyed X.

"Stop trying to read my mind," he surprised her. "I'll give you further information tomorrow. For now I suggest rest. Also, you'll be working with a partner and share your quarters with him."

"I work—"

"You'll work as the U.S. Government tells you to. Actually, you should be more than a tad interested. He too was in alien custody. Abducted in the same party as you, so getting to know him won't be an issue."

"Vhat? One of my men? How did you find him?"

"He found us," X retorted as he opened the door to her new room.

"Hallo, love." The pudgy man sat inside on a simple wood chair, playing solitaire on a plank of cardboard stacked on a tin box.

"You…" Irina muttered.

Next Chapter: The Triple Agent? Coming Soon


	11. Chapter 11

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

(**Bold **text is translated from Russian to English)

Chapter 11: The Triple Agent?

Irina stared awestruck at the portly archeologist in the same sleazy getup he had in Akator. George 'Mac' McHale's tenacity and tendency for survival was always something to admire, but having to stand in his grease-ridden air was best avoided. He always smelled like sweat and booze laced with old cheese. Even at that moment a hunk of feta smashed between two halves of bread lay violated on the piece of cardboard near his array of playing cards. His mustache was covered in it, white bits and crumbs clumsily spread out like it would be on a child's lip. And he had that same smile, stupid, yet slightly cunning with a dash of really good luck.

"Is it too late to get shot between the eyes," Spalko grumbled with no amusement or jocularity.

"Don't push it, Spalko. Mr. McHale has once again aligned himself with Soviet forces, this time under orders of the CIA. He'll be helping you get inside the target location." X was in no mood to even halfheartedly consider shooting her. He had a mind to do without hesitation if he weren't for his strict orders.

"And where is that?" Irina had been bombarded with an onslaught of information, but had yet to be told exactly where they were going.

X sensed her distrustfulness.

"Until tomorrow." As far as X was concerned she was on a need to know basis. "I'll contact the Bantu Wind and give them the coordinates so you'll have a getaway when the dust settles. You're working for the CIA now. We wouldn't dream of harming a high profile enemy of the Russian state." X, a humorless man by nature, couldn't help but find satisfaction in that one final gouge at the Ukrainian. It wasn't that difficult. All he had to do was remind her of who she was representing, no matter what her personal feelings had done to get her to submit.

Once X was gone, Spalko went to claiming her personal area. There were two cots across the room from one another against separate walls. Between them at the room's center sat Mac in the only chair, playing with his cards. The gray hull of the sub was hardly pleasing to the eye, but Irina wasn't concerned with decorative miscarriages. She was a solider not a housewife. The single light bulb rusted into a fixture barely lit the entire room. It would be enough. The only thing her quarters needed to do was provide her with enough light to sharpen her sword without lopping off her fingers.

As obnoxious as Mac was, he knew better than to take a jab at her just then. It would be hard to wait, seeing the former Soviet colonel a pawn of the CIA and not allowed to proverbially hold his balls her in a death grip the entire time. That didn't mean she wouldn't try or just snap under her prejudices and slice him up and down with her rapier, which she sat pointedly on the left bunk claiming it as her own. He would wait a while and pick his spot. Fed up with cards he dug around in his dark kaki jacket for his pack of smokes. After lighting up, he observed Irina sitting on her cot staring purposefully into a wall so she didn't have to look at him, her arms crossed like a child in time out.

"Aw, come on, _partner_. Things don't have to be like that. Let's be friends like before, when I was your bitch. Only difference here is now we're both bitches for Uncle Sam. How did X get you to do this anyway? Aren't you commies prepared to die for the state?"

She ignored his question and responded with one of her own "How did he get you?"

"You kiddin'? A load…_load_ of good old American currency to help get me started when I immigrate. Yankees are the great meltin' pot after all."

Irina let out a stiffened sigh and rolled her eyes as she slunk back onto her cot. The tank top bunched up under the sudden friction, revealing her abdomen. Mac, always one to check out any skin showing on a woman, ogled her like a pork chop. Irina didn't bother to try and read his thoughts. She knew very well what he wanted and the only way he would get it was if she were a corpse.

"You can look, but you had better not touch," she warned.

Noticeably jarred by her cautioning, Mac tried to explain himself. "Oh, I was just admiring your tattoo."

"You idiot, I don't have a tattoo."

"Don't have a good grip on your body, do ya? Look."

Agitated just by the sound of his voice she sat straight up and pulled the ratty tank top up and eyed her stomach. Across her midriff, just above her belly button, were the numbers '1117,'carved messily in dark numbering. Judging by the way it looked, Irina recognized the scar tissue as being hand done, likely with a hot piece of pointed metal, like the end of a coat hanger. Her eyes went wide with a flood of emotions. Anger and confusion rushed over her like a rabid wave sneaking upon a creaky one-man boat bouncing around the sea. She'd never noticed it before. She'd bathed regularly, as best she could, living on the Bantu Wind and she'd never…ever noticed it. How? Had she been branded at Mind's eye prison? Impossible, she would have seen it…surely…right? She didn't have a clear history on her body anymore. Her entire reality was shifting before her eyes. What else had escaped her notice?

Mac noticed her silent rage. The almost raving look in her eyes when they got real big was a trademark of hers he had picked up on during the Akator mission. Mac actually thought it rather humorous. The way her eyes got all bugged out like a little kid throwing a temper tantrum who wanted a piece of candy from the market made him giggle, which he did. "Aw. Did little Spalko get hurt? Well, all I can say is it suits you. You've got a barcode to fit your new lifestyle."

"I'm only assisting so I can find the Ark!" Spit shot from her mouth. She was completely enraged with having to essentially whore herself to American service. Her eyelids disappeared into her wild hostility, like a deer caught in the headlights.

"Why is the box so important to you? Aren't you an atheist?"

This was true. She was an avid scientist and believer in what could be explained through experimentation, logic, and strict reasoning. God didn't fit. She couldn't analyze him. More relevant to her own situation, she couldn't question him on the ideal that he finds a place for all of his children, yet abandoned _her_. She would not submit to putting faith into an all powerful being that had cast her aside without hesitation. One could argue the same of the paranormal, her main study. However, even the metaphysical could be measured and psychic links calculated. The _rabbit experiments_ proved that in simple EKG data. But, not God. There was no God. A God would have answered the prayers of a little girl starving in the cold with no family, no one to love her.

"Once and only once vill I be their pawn."

"Are you kidding? Once they have you, they have you for life."

She ignored his grim foretelling of the future. "It is for personal reasons."

"Yeah, you don't want to get shot like a dog. I understand, we all got to get on the right side, what with you choking at Akator. If you ask me, you were awfully concerned with keeping the gift those aliens gave you. From what I _did_ see, not a whole lot of Soviet pride, dear colonel. " He was having a blast making her squirm.

Irina lunged for her rapier. "I am a servant to the Soviet Union. They turned on me, not the other way around." She couldn't admit that he made a valid argument. She _had_ been taken with own greed in the spur of the moment. She also couldn't help but notice that she said _am_ and not _was_. It still wasn't clicking. She had been labeled an enemy and would remain one until she died. The Union would not forgive her. If X was correct she was out of element in a world that was no longer interested in the strange mysteries the paranormal could offer them. The Soviets were winning the space race and the American's would just as soon lock their secrets away than use them unless their was a nuke attached to one of them.

Mac was quick to plea for his life. "X'll have your head for it!"

The point of the blade rested below his chin. "Not before he has yours. Out. Now."

"Wha—"

"Out!" At knifepoint, Mac opened up the door and nearly fell out on his ass getting there. Irina threw a pillow aimed at his head from what used to be his cot and slammed the door in his face. He would sleep outside on the floor like any animal.

Spalko heard no more protests. Mac knew better than to bang on the door it seemed. It could only end bloody and bad for the overweight spy.

Personally she could tolerate Mac's constant attempts to rile her up. However, she needed him out so she could disrobe and examine herself without catcalls. She set her rapier aside and franticly pulled off her top and felt around her belly on the scaring of her stomach, her fingers gliding along the rough numerals. She wasn't sensitive to pain in the area. It was an old burn, likely with lead based ink or paint. It was probably slapped on her at the prison while she was mentally impaired and incoherent. She, somehow or another, had missed it the entire time. Considering her rough couple of months and how out of wack her awareness had been, it wasn't unusual. However, it meant giving herself a thorough examination for any other bad surprises. First she slipped off her boots and slid them under her bunk. She went about groping and patting her legs like she was frisking a newly acquired prisoner. She was sore around the knees, had some minor swelling. She checked all of her lower half and moved on.

After that she went though the routine check of her breasts at she would for breast cancer. Nothing out of the ordinary. Irina did have quite a lot of issues in and around abdomen, two of ribs were still healing, again, from the beatings she received at the prison. Irina's face still had a slight discoloration on her left cheek from getting punched. She knew this because of the mirror Katanga had given her aboard the Bantu Wind.

When she ran her fingers through her hair and across her scalp, she discovered her needle in the haystack. Another anomaly on her person. On the back of her head there was a patch of loose skin beneath the hair under which she fingered a small lump. It was about four centimeters wide and extremely hard like bone but felt somehow separate from her body. She poked and prodded at it, finding it slightly mobile. It was definitely a foreign object.

As if cued by her discovery her mind lit afire. A rapid pattern of shocks caused uncontrollable stiffening in her body followed by sudden convulsions. Before she could rationalize the involuntary movements she collapsed onto her cot into nothingness.

Harry Sanders hadn't done anything except be an American. He was a fair-haired hiker on holiday in the Italian Alps. Little did he know that Irina Spalko was on mission there at the time looking for supposedly magically powered remnants/artifacts left behind in 218 B.C. when Carthaginian general Hannibal crossed the alps along with an great army. It was false of course, nothing but small trinkets of little value to the Soviet cause. Her time wasted, she came across the _capitalist puppet_, as she called him, in a moment of frustration. He offered her provisions. Irina bludgeoned him to death with the shovel he had been using to clear snow from his various campsites.

Lukas Bauer was a German double agent working under orders of the then O.S.S. against the Nazi war machine. He joined the O.S.S. feeling the Nazi's had disgraced his country. Spalko, then only a Captain, after meeting him in an unoccupied cabin within the barren snowy wastelands inside Russian boarders, killed him via rapier on _principle_ because of the massive Soviet casualties that occurred while fighting against German forces at the Battle of Stalingrad, then cleansed herself of any connection by burning his body and the cabin down in order to avoid a arrest because of America's and Russia's involvement in the Allied Forces.

The Ugha tribe, descendants of the Mayans who were ruled by beings from another dimension had lived in the ancient city of Akator completely apart from humanity. They had existed for centuries unbeknown to the rest of the world. Irina Spalko sent them head first into extinction, each and every one when she ordered her troops to massacre them. Not only had Spalko murdered out of her own prejudices but she was also guilty of genocide.

The Ugha, painted torso and limbs, bolas in hand, along with Lukas, Harry, and dozens…_dozens _of unjustly murdered people confronted a maimed Spalko in the void of white light as she lay strapped to the spacemen's operating table. Although the scorched skull that represented what was left of her face had no eyes, she still saw them surround her, questioning her, attacking her. Harry, his head caved in, gouged her with a bloody shovel. The burned remains of Lukas, black as pitch yet somehow still in one form, tore at her body. She could see right through the bullet-riddled corporal being of the Ugha. All waited in turn for a chance to make her suffer. The lifeless ripped her clothes, cut her skin, and wrenched out her hair. She had no vocal cords with which to protest. They all asked of her…

_Why_

_Why_

_WHY_

Irina awoke sprawled on her back atop her cot, her upper half still completely nude and her '1117' tattoo itching. A thin layer of sweat had glazed her body making her hair muffled and sticky. She cautiously felt the back of her head again as she stood up to grab a pack of cigarettes tied with a rubber band to a box of matches Mac had left when she tossed him out. She turned out the dim light and lit up a gasper as Mac's British kin would call it and collapsed into her cot again. First thing in the morning (she was exhausted enough), she would have X examined whatever was implanted in her head. She had a hunch it had something to do with her hallucinations.

The lit end of her cigarette broke through the darkened silence, the smoke gently rising to the heavens. Spalko wept for the second time in her life. _**I'm a monster.**_

Next Chapter: Surgery and the Briefing coming soon.


	12. Chapter 12

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

(**Bold **text is translated from Russian to English)

Chapter 12: Surgery and Briefing

_"How did X get you to do this anyway? Aren't you commies prepared to die for the state?"_

Irina had claimed personal reasons. Truthfully, the more she had thought about it, sprawled across her cot, smoking and fingering the object in the back of her head, she really had no reason to help them. Since her escape from soviet custody she'd been wandering aimlessly. The only reason she accepted hastily was because of the image of the ark. It matched her dream. What the aliens wanted with it…and her…was intriguing to no end. Her obsessive personality would never let it go. She had to understand why the aliens wanted with her and why the ark was so important to them. Why, why, why? The more she thought about it the more new questions popped up and irritated her just when she thought she had something figured out.

She couldn't tell anyone about it to get any kind of second opinion without getting laughed at or Agent X suddenly becoming more curious than she wanted. So far, he'd made no inquires of where she was after Akator before she fell into Russian hands. Perhaps to him it was irrelevant or it had escaped his notice. The ladder seemed improbable. Nothing seemed to escape his notice. She counted, perhaps foolishly, on him not interrogating her on her newfound abilities. Spalko would die before she would be studied in a federal prison. It was possible that he had somehow come into possession of the Soviet files on her and had accepted their findings…nothing of interest. If her expanded powers went unnoticed to them, there was a good chance it would go unnoticed to X.

The entire situation had become far too complicated in a matter of just a few hours. She had decided, before finally passing out after running out of cigarettes, that the simplest answer would prove to be the best. She would cooperate with the CIA so she could kill Maslov and use the Ark to answer her questions. The God transmitter would tell her everything. Period. The CIA could have the Ark when she was done with it. Of course, if she could do so without getting her face melted off.

First, of course, she would put a damper on the spacemen's plans. Despite their convincing jumps into her past and making her live the same suffering she inflicted on others, their attempts were futile. Yes, she was monster and yes it had made her weep. Yet, she had been a monster with orders. She knew only the enemy. She could never be blamed for any murder she committed in the name of the Union. _**It was the Soviet Union that killed those people**_, she convinced herself. _**I was but the tool by which they did it**_. Besides, moments of weakness were common in such as state of upheaval. She was not interested in redemption. They would not make her a pawn…she spent the better part of her life a pawn…never again. Just because a country was corrupt that practiced it, didn't mean she didn't belong in communism's embrace…

…That meant tearing out whatever was in the back of her head.

**_I'm not looking for redemption…_**

………………………

"I really don't have the tools to do this here," the jittery doctor confessed in the sickbay of the submarine. He was about twenty years past his prime and had the composure similar to a barber of the old west with an unsteady hand, trying to shave a patron in the middle of a gunfight full of near misses. He was certainly not suited to face a sadistic femme fatale so early in the morning, especially with news that went against her demands.

Spalko sat on the bottom of a double bunk in her under garments, namely her tank top and shorts. After insisting on a full medical examination, she wanted the medical officer, one Lt. Martin Williams, to open the back of her head and pull out the foreign object. While Williams agreed that indeed a foreign object rested at the back of her skull, the post op care would void her mission and he had strict orders from his Captain, through a letter of the alphabet, to do nothing to endanger it.

"You've a scalpel, yes?" Spalko mood was obviously elevated by his passive refusal to operate and X's unseen hands on the subject.

"Uh…yeah.."

"Then cut me open. I vant this out of me!" She didn't care if the doctor had to shave her bald to do it. Every time she had a hallucination it took an even greater toll on her body each time. It also confronted her with her past and shamed her actions. Without the implant, she could function normally again and no longer be connected to the collective mind of the aliens. She knew what they were up to and she didn't want it. Redemption. She might have committed acts of unnecessary violence, but she was a solider. She was a monster…with orders. She took orders. She had a duty. No matter what the Union had done she still held pride in the fact that she had served and served well in something she had believed in.

Also, if she could get it out without X's detection, it would be better. She didn't want him to have any knowledge of it at all. If he did, there would be a good chance of him altering their deal.

As if on cue…

"Too dangerous at the moment." X emerged from the shadows and approached the two. He then excused the doctor out of the room. "Why the urgency?"

"Ah, my favorite pig," the sarcastic woman sighed. "You know, X, I've decided you give you a real name. Porky, like the American cartoon."

"You haven't answered my question." Irina could sense the irritation behind his sunglasses. He was already thinking exactly what she was afraid he would. There had been contact made with the spacemen and Col. Spalko.

"Vhen there is something in your head that doesn't belong, one does feel pressed to get it out, Porky," she bluffed. "It's probably something my comrades slapped on me vhile I was incarcerated."

He stood there silently for several moments, eyeing her coldly. X knew and Irina knew he knew. "I've seen this sort of thing before, Spalko. Objects…devices…inside people's limbs that cause convulsions, sudden onset of diseases, and memory regression. That's not Soviet."

"You aren't going to put me away."

"Why would I suggest that?…Did you make contact?"

No answer.

"Spalko. If you're withholding information…"

"Yes! I did! I only have vague impressions of vhat happened. That's the truth! You vill not change our deal. I vill recover the Ark and you vill leave me be."

"I had no intention of deviating from our deal. Abductions don't interest us. I don't you know anything of intrigue. Though, with this new information I must inform you that as with most of cases I've seen with implants in the head, the_ host_ usually doesn't last past a few years after the device's discovery. It's not operable either. All the more reason to focus only on your mission."

So, she was doomed either way. Irina had to get to the Ark. Even more than answers to her questions, it was the only hope for survival. Why had she been granted such amazing new powers of projection, only to be sentenced to a prolonged death? Was it all nothing but an experiment? Could the 'god transmitter' answer that as well? She would find out.

"It's time to give you the full scope of your mission."

X took off his hat and glasses as he sat in a nearby chair, one that Lt. Williams had been using. For the first time Irina saw the eyes of the elusive and mysterious agent. They were black and glassy, like doll's eyes, feeding into his generic appearance. His head was so shiny it nearly cast it's own reflection in the light.

His posture had changed. He no longer sat straight up, he slouched, his hands draped between his knees. He leaned closer to Irina. His expression was one of worried seriousness. Every passing moment he became more human and less like a robotic appendage of the CIA. Whether it was for effect or because he was genuinely troubled by what was to come, she didn't know.

"You've been chosen to complete this task, frankly, because of your expendability. The CIA no longer feels you are a threat to national security and upon the mission's completion you will be free to go about your earthly business. I want your full attention, Spalko. There is a reason the Ark sat in Hanger 51 for 21 years unused. It is something that never meant to be harnessed by human hands. It leaves a path of unbiased destruction wherever it goes. However, if anyone is close to managing such a feat as controlling, it is Col. Petrov.

For the past few years, CIA plants in Mossad have gathered evidence that Israel's national intelligence agency has been turning a blind eye to Soviet activities in the West Bank, inland from the northern shore of the Dead Sea."

Spalko cocked an eyebrow. "Qumran? Vhere the Dead Sea Scrolls vere discovered in 47?"

"The same."

"Vhy isn't Mossad interfering?"

"Likely because of money and Soviet weaponry. Besides, I don't think Mossad has a grasp of everything they're doing.

Qumran was one of the rumored resting places of the Ark after the destruction of Solomon's Temple, until of course, the excavation of Tanis. Our plants have managed to confirm that there is indeed a small Soviet presence in the caves at Qumran and that Ark is there now with Petrov, Maslov being the head of security for the project."

"Vhat are they doing there vith it?"

"Likely trying to recreate the ritual the Nazi did to open the Ark. Why it would work this time…no idea. They must know something we don't. There have been reports of massive casualties, though. They've been using locals in Jerusalem and even their own ranks to test it underground. So far, it appears that they have only ended in disaster. Your mission is as follows.

When the submarine surfaces in a few days we'll be in the Philippines. From Manila you'll fly to Jerusalem and trek out to the site. Mac will accompany you and vouch for you if any trouble arises in Jerusalem where he'll await your return, but don't think you can just waltz into the caves at Qumram just like that. This will require stealth. We don't know what's in those caves and that's a dangerous factor. Just get back to Jerusalem with the Ark. As I said before, Mac will be waiting there for you."

"This is all very vague, Porky."

"I know. You'll be shooting in the dark."

Chapter 13: Birthplace of the World Coming Soon.


	13. Chapter 13

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

Chapter 13: Qumran

The plane ride from Manila to Jerusalem aboard the tiny cargo plane was long and cramped. Every time Irina tried to get some sleep in her own corner she'd end up rolling over into Mac's lap when she tossed and turned trying to get comfortable. McHale couldn't help but find himself almost on top of her in his own futile attempts for shuteye. A few socks in the crotch dissuaded him from any further _coincidences._ She put her back against one of the crates accompanying them on the journey Irina believed were there just to make the trip more unbearable. She was using her duffle bag as a pillow and propped herself up a bit. Her rapier sat dutifully at her side. She eyed Mac, whom had retreated to the only elevated place to sit or rest in the entire cargo area, a wooden pallet that had been bolted to the side of the hull and had crated rocks underneath it for support. The surface had a bed of straw and musty pillow atop it, likely where the pilot, a tanned Filipino who's name she couldn't recall or pronounce in her thick Ukrainian accent, slept. Mac had claimed the makeshift bed the second they came abroad, insisting his back problems required he be made completely comfortable or it might interfere with his reliability.

"A few more hours until we land!" The pilot scream was deafened in the thin air. Though, it was clear enough for Irina to believe that his English might have been better than hers. He barely sported an accent, likely on purpose. The CIA had probably used him before in missions that required him be a tad more involved than just a step and fetch it. What exactly, she couldn't guess, but something. She was sure of it. A spook knows another spook when they see one. People in the business, no matter what side they played could spot each other easy, that is if they were smart enough.

She gave a single nod while Mac complained about the time. Spalko would use the time to sleep…

The day was bright and hot. It was the kind of day where if you had no shade the sun felt like someone's giant flashlight perpetually in your face. Unfortunately for Irina, dressed in a tank top and dark khaki pants, she had no umbrella with her as her boat glided along the transparent water. The boat was no different that a small fishing vessel meant for one or two people. However, it had no motor or paddles to move her. Yet it _did_ move, floating gingerly along despite there being no breeze whatsoever. No sound. She squinted through the bright rays of the sun to see any kind of land on the horizon. There was none in sight. She was completely stranded in the middle of the ocean. Alone.

Just when she was convinced of her solitude, she saw a small mass floating out in the distance, like a person, facedown. They were wearing a blue collared shirt, a few shades darker than the crystal clear ocean around them. Whatever was propelling the boat was headed straight for it. It was moving a little bit. They were alive. Spalko shifted onto her knees and leaned over the side of hull. As if aware of Irina's intentions, the boat slowed to a stop as it came upon whoever it was. Irina grabbed them by the collar and pulled them up. As she turned them over to tug them inside the boat, Spalko gasped. She stared into the bloated, swollen face of Harry Sanders. His skull was warped out of shape from repeated shots from the shovel Irina used to kill him. The skin on his face was in the process of turning to mush and his eyes were already gooey lumps sunken into the sockets. She dropped him back in the water in wide-eyed terror. In the suddenness of it, his jaw fell open, agape. Her eyes moved down to his clothed chest. Plastered across it was an American flag.

"Why was this all you saw?" His gritty voice fought through the water in his lungs.

She stood straight up in the boat wanting anything but to be there. Just as she prepared herself to dive in the water and swim any direction having no idea how many miles it would take to reach land, other decomposing refuse…dozens of them… started floating around the water, all identified with a flag plastered across their chests, signifying where'd they'd come from…what side they represented.

German, American, British, Peruvian.

After all that's what had mattered. Where they were born and what the battle lines clearly defined as distinction between friend and enemy was the only thing that mattered, not that they had been somebody's father, mother, brother sister, son, or daughter. Not to Spalko when she murdered them.

"The people I killed deserved to die! They vould have done the same—"

"I offered you assistance," Sanders cut in. "I didn't care if you were a Soviet. I was a person before I was an American. Not everyone is cut from the same cloth of hatred you are."

Her eyes turned to Pierce, that lifeless piece of meat that had kept living, tortured and mutilated. He had a paper bag on his head to cover the gaping hole he had instead of a face. On it, an unhappy smiley face had been drawn on it. "Stop carrying a flag."

Spalko looked down at herself. She was dressed in her gimnasterka, covered in blood, a hammer and sickle burning its way into her chest, a product of an invisible iron.

Spalko felt herself strain against an unseen force to maintain control of herself. Her right hand came alive and upholstered her sidearm, the Tokarev pistol. Pierce fell into its sights. Her left hand clamped down her right wrist. She couldn't force it down. It was like mashing on steel. The shot fired off, spreading Michael's brains across the ocean surface, providing a nice meal for the seagulls.

Another familiar pair swayed into her view. It was Michael's family. His wife's hair was patchy and grotesque, his daughter, a tattered and malformed rag doll.

"Why isn't daddy coming home?" The girl's lips slurred through her inquiry.

"I…didn't vant him to suffer…I owed him…"

"Where's my daddy…"

"I'm sorry…"

Again the gun fired unchecked. Twice. Goodbye to the annoying Pierce family. Maybe they'd say hello to Michael for her.

"No!"

"Sorry for what?"

_Mac…_

Spalko sat up aboard the cargo plane. Mac was gawking at her curiously from his straw and wood throne.

Quickly regaining her composure, Irina scoffed and turned her back to him. She didn't sleep again for the rest of the flight.

…………………………………………

It was such an odd experience standing in a place considered by many to the birthplace of it all. Jerusalem was one of the earth's oldest cities with evidence of permanent settlements going as far back as the copper age. As Irina stood in the densely populated market place in the hot midday sun, she couldn't help but admire the unparalleled majesty. It was like the people had built the entire city out of sand and rock. She had always wanted to visit the Old City sector, which until the 1860's _was_ Jerusalem, and see the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock. However her active duty in the Union prevented any such leisure. Of course, she was not here to admire the sights _this_ time either. She couldn't forget her purpose.

Irina found some shade near an unoccupied street vendor kart just outside the grogshop where Mac was negotiating with _a friend of a friend_ for information about the Soviet activity in the area. She was certainly not incognito in her gimnasterka. It was the first time she'd been in full uniform since entering incarceration. It fit a tad loosely on her. She'd yet to completely regain her normal weight and was likely never to because of the massive purging she'd been put through. After her vivid nightmare onboard the plane she felt dirty in it like she could still feel the blood that had stained it and smell the smoke of the branding iron that had burned into it. Whoever or whatever transmitting thoughts into her head were pulling out all the stops it seemed. Terrifyingly enough, she was beginning to think it was working. She'd been thinking a lot about Michael recently, so much so that it made her sick to her stomach with guilt. It made the fact that she needed her full concentration more difficult.

"Alright." Mac reappeared with an open bottle of cheap booze, still in his sweaty khaki getup. After a taking a hardy swig and wiping his mouth off on his sleeve as he took a big breath of fresh air, he continued his unraveling. "My _friend_ in there said there's an improvised Soviet airfield a few miles outside of the city. Minimal personnel and equipment, flights go straight to the caves. Got a couple of jeeps too."

"And just how do ve get to the airfield," Irina questioned. "Camels?"

"We're hoofing it. Couldn't afford any transportation. I spent the last penny I had on getting _that_ information."

"And on cheep liquor." Irina tapped the bottle hanging at his side with the tip of her sheathed rapier. "Have a drink, Mac." She snatched the bottle and took a long swig off of it before tossing up against the wall of the grogshop shattering it into thousands of tiny jagged pieces. Mac knew better than to argue. Instead he brought up an interesting observation, probably his first and last ever.

"Weird," he said. "How you figure Mossad hasn't figured out something fishy's going on around here."

"They know," she replied matter-of-fact.

"How ya figure?"

"I stick out like a sore thumb around here." This was true. After all she was a pale bob haired woman in a Russian World War Two uniform sporting a sword. "Yet, every one is ignoring me. Purposefully. They know. Everyone knows. They being quiet about it for a reason."

"Uh-huh." Mac was under impressed. "Why?"

"I don't know. Fear maybe. Maybe something else."

Next Chapter: Spalko Vs. Maslov coming soon


	14. Chapter 14

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

(**Bold** is translated Russian)

Chapter 14: Spalko Vs. Maslov

A familiar widow's peak stepped out of the run down hostel onto the cobblestone steps. To the aging Russian, the less than five star accommodations meant little to him. As long as the purpose was served to a high standard of excellence on Soviet time he would sleep with rats and for more than two months had done so whether in the caravansary in Jerusalem or in the drilled out caverns beneath the caves in Qumran. He would do whatever it took despite any inconvenience to himself or the lives of the men he was commanding so Petrov could waste the last breaths of a dieing age on his God transmitter.

The dilapidated building Maslov had stepped out of had been purchase with the money of the Soviet Socialist Republic so that the Russian military presence in the West Bank could have a headquarters of sorts out of the way of unwanted attention and still be close enough to the city so they could keep an eye on any suspicious activity that might concern them. Also, it was imperative that they be able to send out their communiqué without arousing too much awareness. Not that they had too much to worry about from the Government itself. Mossad had been surprisingly lax about the entire thing. Once upper command at Moscow hammered out the details of the arrangement with them in matters of payment methods and trading Maslov saw little of them. Of course, everybody knew there were plants checking for certain to make sure everything was on the level. That was fine. Petrov was convinced that they had no interest in the Ark as it was not harvestable in their eyes and as long as the Soviets didn't create any collateral they didn't pay for things would remain copasetic. Still, Maslov couldn't help but detect an unusual amount of fear surrounding the Ark and its foreboding reputation.

Maslov went back and forth to the hostel constantly to personally oversee the sending of progress reports to Moscow. While it was true that any underling could handle the job, Maslov needed the time away from Petrov to keep his head. It wasn't enough that he was forced into a position of command away from his prison that he did not want, but he also had to stand by and watch the very men under his watch become statistics in Petrov's futile attempt to harness the power of God. The chaos caused by a single _Ark Opening_ was wide enough to exhaust the ranks of volunteers in the catacomb HQ and stack up causalities by the truckloads. At the same time the sheer heat created by it when it burned through the flesh and bone of a serviceman made no funeral pyre necessary, just a broom to sweep up the ashes blanketing the ground. It made Maslov sick to the very core of his being. The kind of destruction it caused dwarfed anything of any known weapon and it took all the restraint in the world to keep Maslov from slaying Petrov for using it on their own kind.

The trips back and forth were thus a good management of time.

Maslov had just finished up a coded radio transmission to Moscow and was weaving his way through the narrow alleyways. The location had been chosen for its discreetness and general unsavory nature that would ward off undesirable attention. He stepped over trash and beggars as he made his way toward his jeep on a secluded city street. He'd driven himself in, but upon arriving he had a pudgy Sergeant look it over, tune it up, and fill up the gas tank. He'd also brought with him a big empty crate that filled up the backseat/trunkspace and ordered the lower officer to fill it up for provision for the men still at the caves, which with all the causalities had been lowered to about two-dozen. Granted, this project had been small to begin with…but not that small. The thought tied Maslov's stomach up in knots.

When he found his vehicle, the stubby little man had the hood up and was tinkering around in the engine with a wrench. Just observing his overweight form made Maslov shake his head. His uniform was about four sizes too small. His neck looked like it was popping out of the collar.

"I didn't tell you to dismantle the damn thing."

The Sergeant slammed the hood shut. "**Sorry sir. Its all fine now, sir**."

Maslov got his first good look at the man's face since arriving. He was sporting a mustache.

"**Did you get all the provisions I ordered?**"

"**Yes sir**."

Maslov considered looking inside. He lifted the lid halfway.

"**It's all there sir**," the other man broken in hastily.

"**Didn't ask you**." Maslov eyed him for a few intense moments. He dropped the lid and hopped inside the jeep. Spalko exhaled heavy. Close call.

Once Maslov disappeared into the distance back to the airfield, Mac started tearing out of the Soviet uniform unconcerned of anyone that could be watching. He couldn't stay in it one more second. It wouldn't have hurt Spalko to find a better fit before she sprang into action on a petite cadet. Better yet she could have stuck to the plan they'd discussed in the market place. But, no. She had to go and start having her visions halfway out of town. So what if she'd sensed Maslov in the area. Why the hell was she so eager to face him? That wasn't the mission. The Ark was the mission.

………………………

It was a very tight fit in the crate. The gun that X had issued to her was digging into her hip. It was a .45 automatic. Standard issue of the U.S. armed forces. Her rapier didn't help either. She had to be careful. If she shifted her position on it her leather holster would rub against the wooden grating and her target would hear it. Stealth and time was of the essence. If she killed him too early, she'd be stranded with no sense of direction. She'd have to estimate when he was nearing the airfield before surprising him. It was hard to find patience. Spalko wanted desperately to murder the source of her greatest agony in years. Yet, she managed to contain he urges. _**Wait for it**_, she told herself. _**It's just a few miles away.**_

She spent most of the ride congratulating herself. If she hadn't thought to reach out with her feelings she would have never _felt him out_. Call it a hunch that formed a knot in her throat, but she had been compelled to use the teachings of Pierce to stretch out her intuition. As with finding a host in the prison to be subjected to her sensory tricks, Spalko had imagined a dense fog around her and everyone else. It touched everyone in the city as it touched her…connecting them to her. It didn't take long to feel out the Soviet presence and of course that familiar stench that wafted around Vektor Maslov a few miles outside Jerusalem, coming closer. From there it was just a matter of quietly doing away with a few sentinel station guards and putting Mac into place before he arrived.

Irina picked up on the change in his mood. Anticipation. It was time.

She had decided it would be better to stab him when she opened the crate. It was so much more personal than a shooting. A shooting implied a cold distance and matter of fact business. With a stabbing, you had to get really close. It was messy and you saw them suffer. Spalko would forever regret it if se allowed his death to be quick and painless. Michael's hadn't been.

The crate lid flew up and it one concise movement, she sat up, unsheathed her rapier and stabbed it through the seat. The tip grazed the horn on the steering wheel, causing to sound off once. Maslov made no sound…because as she realized just in the kick of time, he was no longer seated at the wheel. He'd locked the jeep into acceleration. She let go of the rapier and looked up and behind herself just as Maslov, standing on the rear behind the crate and the open lid, aimed his pistol at her forehead. She ducked as he fired off a shot. The bullet buried itself into the dashboard. Instinctively her hand wrapped around the wrist of his firing arm and jerked it into the sharp edge of the open crate. The pistol dropped and ricocheted off the side of the jeep as it fell away quickly becoming a black dot in the sand.

Spalko wrapped her arms around the crates exposed edge and hoisted herself up and shot her feet out in front of her and slammed the open lid into Maslov, sending him onto his back, his arms dangling off the end of the vehicle like a rag doll. She was on top of him quick as a flash. She punched him in square in the jaw once with her right, then the left. Her teeth grinded against one another, a grim satisfaction seeping into her soul with each crack of her knuckles against his face.

In desperation, he lurched upward; head butted her, and pushed her off. Her head bounced off the back of the passenger seat as she fell backward. Maslov lunged for the protruding handle of her sword sticking out of his driver seat. He had just barely gotten a grip on its handle when Spalko's boot connected with his chest. All the air hurried out of his lungs as they stiffened and compressed. His back crushed up against the crate. His half hazard grip on the rapier freed it from the seat but sent it flying, clanging into the crate behind him.

Suddenly the jeep rocked back and forth, hard. Maslov and Irina shared a singular thought as their eyes met. _**That can't be good. **_For the moment the fight became unimportant and Maslov crawled over and stared over the diver seat. Spalko turned around and gazed over the passenger side. The road had ended and they were veering into rocky territory, rapidly approaching a sudden drop off. It was the airfield. The Soviets had set it up inside a small canyon area, like a crater mashed out of the ground by a giant fist.

Taking advantage of the sudden distraction, Maslov snatched her .45 and pistol-whipped her. The force behind it sent her sprawling over the side of the jeep, she could feel the heat of the sand and rock under the tires. Maslov rolled her over and stuffed the barrel of the gun into her mouth.

"**Bye, bye Bitch**."

_Click! _It was jammed.

Spalko stuck a right jab into the base of his neck.

"**Made in America my darling**."

The gun dropped. He retreated to the driver seat choking and spewing as he tried to swerve the jeep away from the drop off. Spalko was next to him like a flash and socked him. Then she grabbed a hold of the seat belt strap and wrapped it around his neck and began to strangle him. He slunk back in the seat trying to relieve the pressure to no avail. The farther he sank down the harder she tugged. She plopped her butt down onto his chest to stop his movement and finish him off. She made sure their eyes were locked on one another in what she prayed was his last moments.

Maslov's hands franticly felt around on the floorboards for anything that wasn't nailed down. His thin fingertips suddenly felt the embrace of cold steel. He tightened his grip on it and smacked her directly in the temple causing a dazzling spray of pain. It was the wrench the sergeant back in the city must have carelessly left behind.

Spalko fell back into the passenger seat. She could feel blood pouring down her head. She was losing consciousness. Maslov could finish her now. All she saw was a big light blur. Her head swayed back and forth. A thin line of drool formed at the edge of her bottom lip. Why hadn't he killed her….

…_**The cliff…**_

…_**THE CLIFF…**_

…because he was bailing while he still had a chance. _**GET UP**_.

A surge of adrenaline shot through her. She stood straight up in the seat and in a panic clawed for the back of the jeep. Her stomach climbed into her throat as the jeep began its free fall. The sudden updraft of air carried her out of the vehicle and smacked her up against the canyon wall. The wave of strength was over. Her body went limp as it slid all the way down to the bottom. She got up and staggered around. She couldn't let Maslov get away. Where was he? Her eyes came into focus and saw the biplane beyond the jeeps smoking wreckage. Its propeller was already moving…there!

Maslov was climbing aboard. There was a pilot with him.

_**Go!**_

Refusing to give up, Spalko wiped the blood from her forehead and took off after the plane as it began to move farther and farther away. She saw her rapier lying in the dust having also escaped demise. She scooped it up.

Maslov had hoped to have taken off by the time she came to, but Spalko was much more tenacious than he realized. He hurried the pilot to get the Polikarpov U-2 to move faster.

The rapier between her teeth, she lunged onto the wings, her feet resting on the bottom setnd her hands clasped onto the top one. Moments later the wheels left the ground albeit lop-sided due to the extra weight being carried.

The biplane stumbled and warbled out of the canyon as the plot desperately tried to keep it airborne. Spalko held on tight, dangling off the back end. It didn't matter. If she had to she'd crash it.

"**Sir! I can't keep it up. Its too uneven**," the pilot exclaimed

"**Slow it down**," was Maslov loud, irritated response.

Wrench in hand, the Soviet colonel moved like a circus performer on a high wire on to wings using the restraints that locked them into one another to propel him. Spalko braced herself with one hand and let the handle of her sword gentile fall into the other. Maslov did the same with wrench, his only means of defense.

She slashed out at him, only to repeatedly have the blade bated away by his wrench. She couldn't get close enough. In a last ditch effort she lunged at Maslov, sending them both colliding into the pilot's lab, running him through with the blade. The plane shot down into oblivion toward an evitable crash. The g forces picked up, the wind zipping past them taking the wrench with it. Maslov fought to the top of the dog pile. Spalko struggled to pull the rapier out but couldn't. Maslov belted her across the face and then punched her head wound again…and again…and again. Jarred finally to the point of submission, Spalko went limp. Maslov snatched the rapier out of the dead pilots stomach, raised it above his head and sent it soaring down onto the bob haired woman. Her hands suddenly came alive and clasped down flat against both sides of the blade. No matter how hard he pushed, the blade would move. It was as pointless as pulling the sword from the stone of the Arthur legend. Spalko felt a serge of power swell up in her like never before. Maslov could have sworn she saw her eyes lit up like two bonfires. It was blinding….it couldn't be…

The blade snapped off in her hand. Irina twisted her grip on it to face the point in his direction and stabbed it directly into his left eye socket. She smashed it with all her might until it lodged up against the back of his skull.

The moment of victory was short lived as the plane crashed into the desert and erupted in flames spelling certain doom.

NEXT CHAPTER: ?? Coming Soon??


	15. Chapter 15

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

Chapter 15: Another Dance in a Dream

The mud was so wet you couldn't find your footing in it, much less climb out of the trench without reburying yourself in it. The ground was soaked top to bottom. The rain had started before the sun rose that morning and hadn't stopped. With noon fast approaching you couldn't tell from the gloomy heavens. Thick storm clouds swept across the countryside in a blanket of gray. The stage was certainly set for a funeral at which a mass burial would be called for and delivered. War at its most personal level. The trenches, stinking and muggy.

The combination of mud, sweat, and humidity made for a pungent mixture. Irina's breaths were stiff and few. When she could find room enough away from the others sharing the confining space without poking the top of her head out for a sniper to pick off, she'd raise her nose for a decent breath of air away from musk. She looked around at the mud caked faces in a dirty hole. Her countrymen were terrified, but in the way where it only showed in the eyes and an occasional tremor in the hand that would shutter the riffle and clang the barrel against someone else's in expectation of certain death. They had no uniforms. They wore only what they could spare from home that could stand up to harsh conditions. Overalls, tough pants, and heavy shirts. Anything that would protect them from the filth a few days. Spalko too.

She couldn't remember where she was. The only thing she could recall were the demands from upper command that the bridge over the hill be taken. The mound laid several paces from the trench Irina and her comrades inhabited. Past it was a small enemy headquarters. With the bridge in her hands they could mount a decent assault on it. However, the enemy had watches and a squad protecting it in the surrounding forest at all times, just beyond visibility, waiting for a target. But, she could wait no more. Morale was low and upper command was pulling her strings. It was time to strike. Do or die. She was to take that goddamn bridge no matter what the cost, no matter how many died. Victory or bust. That was the only thing that mattered, not that Spalko couldn't understand how she'd come there or where _there _was, just to take the bridge. It was vital to the war effort. What war? That didn't matter either. She had orders. If that meant dead bodies on her watch on either side of the battle lines then so be it. It was all for the greater good. What greater good? Did it have a name? Did she know what it was? It didn't matter. She had orders.

A solider always knows when to give the call to arms. It's like a sudden change in atmosphere that stings the skin as lurching feelings swell up in their belly ready to pop like a balloon.

She took a deep breath and readied her riffle. She howled, if only for the pride of battle. Mud and rocks collapsed into the dugout runway where she and her platoon had just been as if they were never there at all. Her knees buckled, being crunched up in a trench for so long, as she charged uphill. As they reached the top and dipped downward toward the bridge, the inertia was absolutely euphoric, like a powerful narcotic pulsing through her veins.

There had been a stake out. The enemy had been waiting on the other side, crawling around the bridge like vultures defending a nest. There were too many to count. Dozens of them. The enemy had no uniforms. They looked just like the men Irina commanded. Spalko fired off a shot as both sides enveloped one another.

After only a few moments, they moved liked a swarm. Irina couldn't tell one from the other, one of her men for one of the enemies. They looked the same. No one wore any identifying uniform or tag. Who was the enemy? It didn't matter…yes it did. If she shot her rifle not knowing whom she was shooting at, what difference did it make who she shot? Hell, no one would be able to tell who represented what side unless they stopped and asked. No way to tell by looking until only one was left standing to proclaim victory for one side or the other. They were all the same.

_All the same…_

Spalko awoke to the crackling of fire and the faint smell of burning flesh. Her head was still throbbing from getting pistol whipped by Maslov. The wound itself had already formed a scab. The blood on her head had become dried and sticky. Spalko made a fist, clenching a handful of sand. She could barely move. The important thing was however…

…she survived.

She wasn't in the sun as far as she could tell. Something was providing her with shade. Her eyes opened to a teary blur. She blinked rapidly to clear it up. A wing took shape in front of her. It had lodged itself into the sand and Spalko must have collapsed underneath it after crawling out of the plane wreckage.

Exhausted, her eyes closed again.

…………………………

The deluge splattered directly into her open mouth in the midst of an intake of air, sending her into a choking fit. After she spat it up and gasped for air like a fish out of water, her eyes peered up to find the source even as it continued to flood over her face. In the wing's shadow a familiar face stared down at her. Mac stood over her, emptying out the contents of a canteen.

"I never thought I'd be glad to see you," she admitted.

"It won't last," he replied. "Trust me." He gave her a swift quick in the ribs. Before she could even register an exclamation, two uniformed Soviets grabbed her around the arms and hoisted her up on her feet. Too weak to make a fight, yet enraged by Mac's betrayal, she struggled and squirmed in vain. It was no use. Mac sauntered up to her.

"You bastard. I should have known."

Mac chuckled. "You know how _you people_ are."

"Just kill me and get it over with." Her desperate anger was obvious by the tone of her voice.

"Can't do that. You're _expected_."

She spat on him. It landed right on his right cheek. He responded with a belt across the face.

There was a panel truck nearby with two more officers inside. The two a hold of Spalko drug her over to it and slammed her up against the door and cut her legs out from under her. Her head, already injured, banged against the foot railing. Again, her consciousness began to fade. They tide her hands and feet with rope and picked her up like a corpse in a body bag and carried her to the back of the covered vehicle. She gave one last look of contempt at Mac as her vision faded into blackness. Past him, she saw the wreckage of the aircraft, still smoking, and the cause of the sickening smell of burnt flesh. Maslov's body, now in its various pieces, laid scattered among the debris black as coal, sun bathing…and then it disappeared as she passed back into the void of nothingness…her last thoughts contemplating the meaning of Mac's refusal to eliminate her.

_Expected…_

Next Chapter: At last the Truth Coming Soon


	16. Chapter 16

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

(All dialogue is spoken Russian translated to English. Nothing bolded.)

Chapter 16: At Last the Truth

Qumran.

Her pale blue eyes opened to the familiar vacancy. Darkness. Nothingness. However, this time she could make out the subtle shapes of rock and geological adornments in her shadowy locale. Not a whole lot to admire. Shame. She was in the belly of the caves and couldn't study their majesty. As a student of social science, albeit a unusual offshoot dealing with the power of the mind and the psychic connection between people rather than the study of cultures in general, being in the very place where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, one of the most important sets of documents in human history, was a moment to be cherished, not simply the backdrop of an imprisonment.

The stench of burning ember had remained with her. As Spalko regained her composure she soon realized the scent was not a sensory memory of the plane crash being conjured up by her brain as a response to her head injury. It was overpowering and made her gag. She tried to turn her face away from it but it was all around her. Her spine mashed against the chair sending sharp pains all the way through her body as she swiveled her head around trying to get a decent intake of air. Her wrists were already beginning to chafe behind her back. Her boots were tied to either chair leg to keep her completely put. She struggled for a few brief moments in vain to free herself before giving up, still far too weak to mount an escape.

"I wouldn't ware myself out too badly, my dear," a disembodied voice warned her. "You're going to need your strength."

Like a specter from a distant realm, Agent Col. Dr. Ivan Petrov appeared out of the shadows in front of her, seated comfortably. After lighting the lantern to illuminate his presence, he placed it at his feet. It looked as if the good doctor had lost quite a bit of weight since coming to Qumran. That's what living off of Soviet provisions for months at a time would do to you. His uniform was tattered and in disarray. His carelessness in his appearance had always been a matter of discussion among officers, but he looked atrocious compared to his usual unkemptness. His clothes were ripped up and filthy. He ought to have been ashamed. Despite his murky presentation of himself, he looked positively gleeful.

"I want to thank you for nicely doing away with our common acquaintance, Col. Maslov," he admitted. "His objections to this project were a force to be reckoned with, what with all the casualties." He gestured toward the ground and stamped his boot, shifting through the ashy remains of the men fallen under his command, the source of the singed atmosphere wallowing in the air clotted with smoke and soot residue.

A strong twinge of hatred boiled up in Spalko's stomach realizing she sat on the very resting place of her comrades. She and the others had been taught to sacrifice everything for the Republic and for communism. But, what did that loyalty mean in the hands of a thoughtless madman with no restraint? Not a damned thing.

"Why haven't you killed me, _comrade_?" Venom oozed from Irina's words. "Does my flesh not burn as well as theirs did?"

"Don't rub that egocentric nonsense in my face," was his quick response. "Save it for your capitalist masters, though I doubt you'll have the chance to serve them again."

The silence was deafening in Spalko's embarrassment at Petrov's knowledge of her assistance to the Americans.

A smile most amusing draped across Petrov's face. Spalko at a loss for words was something to savor.

"You are not dead because you are the _key_ to this project."

Irina's eyebrow rose curiously.

He chuckled. "I'm going to enjoy this little exposition. Prepare yourself."

"Hah," she scoffed

"Stirred by your out-of-character display at Akator," he began, "members of the Science Doctorate and myself lobbied for the sparing of your life in the hopes of discovering to what depth you'd been _changed_ by the Crystal Skull mission. If indeed you made contact, studying your—"

"I've heard all this before," Spalko snapped. "In my comatose state you studied me and found nothing! Then you dumped at that pest hole to die!"

"_Truthfully_, my dear," he cut in abruptly, his tone sharper in response to her interruption, "I found quite many a things of interest, particularly your increased neural activity. I hypothesized that your psychic abilities had increased due to your exposure to extraterrestrials, allowing you to do far more that pick up vague impressions of intuition."

She shrugged slightly. "All the more reason to schedule me for execution. My dear doctor, this conversation is hardly spellbinding. So Maslov's little report didn't include that you _did_ find something. This is supposed to impress me? All it does is reveal how cowardly you are and how desperate you were and probably still are to eliminate me."

"You flatter yourself!" Petrov shot out of his seat knocking the lantern over. His quick temperedness only served to confirm Spalko's estimations. He sat back down hastily and continued as if a teacher scorned by belligerent students. As he turned the lantern upright again, Spalko caught a fleeting glimpse of metal jailhouse bars beyond Petrov's seat. It was as if they'd been stabbed right into the living rock. In that brief instant, the man-made presence in the caves became more pronounced.

"_Eliminate you_? For a psychic, your vision is so very limited." Petrov shook his head disappointingly at her. A flimsy report could say anything to the effect of an _execution _and not hold water in truth. Why did she cling to Maslov's words not understanding the purpose of their distraction? "Smoke screens to a greater calling come in many forms."

"At the same time you were in a coma, I began studying the Ark for the purpose of controlling the multitude of power and spirits inside. Needless to say the set backs were sometimes cataclysmic to the program, but I strived on, determined. Yet, despite my steadfastness, progress was hard to come by. No matter how many times we went through the Hebrew rituals, we could never make it work. Our trove of volunteers quickly evaporated in every sense of the word as you now notice in refuse beneath your feet. Like so many of our long-winded projects depended upon the supernatural, it was quickly becoming as waste of our efforts. After all, how do you _control_ a ghost? I'd almost given up when I had my epiphany."

He let several moments pass as if welcoming a drum roll only he could hear.

"For centuries, charlatans have boasted about communicating with the dead. From village roadsides to the stages of the imperials, they dance and cluck, conjuring their imaginary spirits for quick coin. Some have even claimed to be able to control them like puppy dogs on a leash to do their bidding. Through a psychic link, they proclaim proudly, they can command _angels and demons_. I thought to myself, have I not a _true_ medium at my behest?! One who has been imprinted with abilities from extraterrestrials, dwarfing any garden variety mystic!"

"You are a pathetic excuse for a scientist," she interjected. Spalko finally had a full scope of his intentions with her, his _key_. "Did you _actually_ believe for one second that I would agitate the spirits of the Ark and try to control them as part of a fledging halfcocked idea so that it might aide _you_ or the _Union_? You, my _dear_ doctor, are a few months, one betrayal, and _one murder_ too late." The _one murder_ she referred to was that of Michael Pierce. It came as a shocking surprise to Spalko for her to suddenly draw inspiration for defiance from his death. However, in all honesty…it felt _good_. Perhaps in that vindication she found her first (and probably last) moment of true individuality. She didn't feel guilty anymore for holding Michael in his last moments. It was her choice to do so. No one would take that away from her ever again. She finally understood the words of her late friend. She carried no flag. She held no allegiance.

Irina Spalko was a puppet no more…

…or so she thought…

"Again, you're vision is so very cloudy." Maslov still had an ace up his sleeve. "I never had any doubts about you having…hesitancy. But, I'm very sure the implant in your head will suffice in…changing your mind."

Irina's eyes came alive with terror. A floodgate of panic and tragic realization opened, the utter destruction of her now obvious delusion washed over by the fatal blow to her hope in finding an answer to her existence.

"Naturally, the device was originally intended to bring you out of your coma into some kind of coherency," Petrov continued, "however once you escaped custody, I was quick to learn how the implant's signals into your brain could be used to send elaborate thoughts and dreams, preying on your desires for finding truth and greater meaning to your life beyond Soviet ends. It seems this new age's technology is indeed worth something."

"It...was all…a lie…"was the only thing she could muster to say.

"The spaceship. The Ark. All designed to bring you back to us…here. Even the United States Intelligence apparatus played right into the plan." Sensing her resounding defeat, Petrov slunk back into his chair, no longer alert or interested in a foe beaten and wounded as Spalko. "I hope you didn't _really_ think the aliens had bestowed onto you a quest."

"What about the other dreams?" Why had he sent her on a whirlwind of nightmares that tore apart her ideologies?

"What others?"

"The boat…chastising me for all the people I killed on missions…what had you to gain from that?"

"Are you raving? I've no idea what you're talking about. For all I know they were likely some side effect to the signal. Nightmares occurring of their own accord latching on to random subconscious thoughts or experiences you remember and jumbling them up."

So that was it. The entire aftermath of her emergence from the very edge of existence was nothing more than a calculated plan of the masters whom still held her captive under their banner.

She submitted…finally. She was _broken_.

Spalko hung her head. A puppet on strings forever.

"Tonight's the big night. I think the signal should be strong enough by now to completely control your thoughts with enough restraint to make you concentrate," Petrov said.

Irina sat bound and silent.

Satisfied in his success against the former colonel, Petrov stood, lantern in hand and turned to leave.

"Why," she finally said as the iron barred gate slammed behind Petrov, the smoke from the smoldering lantern already enveloping the two in darkness. "Why do you wish to control the spirits of the Ark?"

"Why do you think?" his disembodied voice said among the shadows. "To unleash a power onto this world the likes of which have never been seen…and know that _we_ did it first."

"A word of warning," the response in the dark was unusually calm. "A wise man told me not so long ago…careful, you may get _exactly_ what you wish for."

Petrov let out a short and stiff chuckle then departed, the taps of his boots sounding off farther…and farther away.

Next Chapter: Finale Coming Soon.


	17. Chapter 17

_I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures._

Chapter 17: The Finale

Two armed grunts carried Spalko, chair and all, through a series of interconnecting tunnels. They plopped her down in front of Petrov, who'd decided to run a comb through his hair for the occasion, and of course, the ramshackle altar where the Ark stood, silently, awaiting a trespasser.

Opposite the Ark was a thick half cylinder sheet of metal jutting out of the ground. It was a small lead lined shield built to accommodate at most two people wishing to avoid any radiation. Behind it, on a raised platform, were a few monitoring devices, a desk with her gun belt sprawled on it accompanied by a two-knob radio.

"Welcome, _former_ Agent Col. Dr. Spalko." Petrov's open armed greeting was mired by the compact conditions. She imagined that when the caves had first been fitted with a staff, most of whom now blackened the floor, there would have been standing room only, like a crowded town hall ready to spill out into the streets to alleviate capacity. When Spalko had been locked up in the dark, the vague impressions had been intriguing and inspiring, enough to make her mind wander endlessly. Now that her locale had been bathed in a handful of spotlights, surrounding her like an amphitheatre, she could see it's true crudity all around her. They were in a dirty rabbit hole.

The Soviets had burrowed themselves deep into the bowels of the cave, further than Spalko had suspected. Though a clever place to hide out, the true significance of the caves still escaped her. She suspected with all of Petrov's gloating, she'd find out before long. Not that it mattered. Her life was over. Petrov had stripped her of everything but her clothes. Hope had been ripped from her chest like a disease-ridden heart. She didn't give a damn. She looked dead, sulking forward, her wrists tied up around the back of the chair the only thing holding her up.

"Perk up!" Petrov smacked her in the face. Her body moved absently with the slap and nearly sent her over. Carefully steadying himself on one foot he crammed his boot into her chest, mashing her back up against the chair. One of the grunts that had carted her into the murky hole stood behind her to brace it from falling. Petrov mashed on her diaphragm while the grunt pulled her by the hair to get her head up. She finally gasped for air and struggled against them. If only she could get free, she'd shown him the true meaning of hopelessness. He'd beg for death's cold embrace. Her violent rocking nearly took the chair off its legs. Petrov nearly tripped over himself getting back to two feet. The grunt slapped his hands over either shoulder and started crushing down on the bone, forcing a yelp to escape her mouth.

Petrov wanted to gloat and damn it if she was going to mope through it. He wanted her alert and focused. It would probably be the last time she would be. The effects of transmitting would likely permanently damage her brain. She should have been thanking him for the privilege of knowing beforehand how _appreciated_ her sacrifice would be.

Once she was settled down, he wallowed in self-satisfaction. The grunt released her and took a few steps back making sure he was still within an arms length of Spalko if she decided to exercise her right to futility.

"Have you any idea what this will mean?" Petrov Asked. "We wont need microchips or crystal skulls to think thoughts for everyone else. Fear is the best mind control device there is. One dose of the Ark onto the world will turn supermen into ashes and countries into cowards."

No response. Her eyes wandered past Petrov to her gun belt and the strange monitoring equipment no doubt there to test and quantify her every interaction with the Covenant. Every passing moment she became more a variable of an equation to be balanced and solved. An _object_. A _thing_.

"Come now, Irina," He'd never before used her first name and the use of it was intended to be insulting, "you aren't even the least bit interested in knowing how we managed it? The technology is years away. I'd thought you'd still be dutifully a student of science and ask the question most obvious, with an answer most intriguing. I _couldn't_ have driven your curiosity from you?"

Still nothing.

"I have imagined this moment for months," Petrov admitted, "and you can't muster yourself enough to ponder out loud the one question that's eating away at you."

Spalko finally looked him in the eye. Still, she said nothing, content to stare him down. She wouldn't satisfy him any further. Her eyes narrowed. Petrov stared back in curious anticipation, waiting impatiently.

"Ask!"

The grunt took a step forward ready to squeeze it out of her if necessary.

Nothing.

_Ask the question_, he thought to himself.

"Let's begin," Petrov said quietly. "A Soviet future starts tonight, even if I have blow this planet back into the dirt where it began to do it."

Petrov retreated behind his shield platform and donned a pair of protective goggles while the grunt drug Spalko's chair onto altar of the Ark. A jarring sensation came over her. She could feel the heat of it warm her skin while at the same time freeze and constrict her veins and arteries. Her pulse began to slow as her blood became thicker and clotted. Meanwhile, her forehead already had a thin layer of sweat glazed on it. Her head wound throbbed under the direct heat.

Irina turned her head franticly, not wanting to lose track of Petrov. She peered into the tiny window on the lead lined shield, only getting brief looks at him fidgeting around behind it.

Ivan giggled as began twisted and turning the knobs on his 'radio' that was in fact the carrier of his signal.

Like aboard the submarine, a shock ran through Irina's body and she began convulsing, throwing her back in the chair, shattering the weakened wood to bits.

The void she'd become so distant from since regaining her hearing and sight returned to her. There was only blackness.

_GET UP_, the familiarly cold voice spoke to her.

She obeyed. She had no choice. Her body responded with immediate precision. She no longer had control over it. Irina was a puppet on strings. For the moment she still had cognitive function, however, even then, she felt it slipping farther and farther away like a light at the end of a hallway.

_TO THE CHEST_

Her body moved through a space she couldn't see. She felt her hands press down onto a smooth surface. What was it?

_LIFT THE LID_

The Ark.

The instant she pulled off the lid it felt as if she'd opened a window inside a boiling pot as a gust of wind enveloped her.

_CONCENTRATE_

The electric charges popped and surged through her brain, broadening her psychic energy. She could feel it swell up around her.

In an instant she was bathed in a white light.

She looked all around her, the light traveling in every direction forever. In it she saw a few patches of darkness. There were others inside the light with her. She walked without caution toward them, somehow already knowing who they were. The one closest to her was the grunt that had dragged her around. He was staring off into nothingness. She wasn't interested in him and approached the other. Petrov. He couldn't see her. He was turning invisible knobs and pressing imaginary buttons in open space. She laid a single finger on his shoulder and turned to face her only then aware of her.

"Come with me," she whispered.

"What the—," he began before being cut off by the void.

Together, they glimpsed a world without time.

They traveled his thoughts one by one. Her powers came more naturally than ever before.

Petrov had lied to her when he said the project was developed around her. His predecessor had in fact initiated it years ago when the crashes in the Union first started occurring. Unlike the crystal beings, the bodies onboard were of flesh and bone, albeit alien. However, by studying data on the ships it was hypothesized that like the crystal aliens, it appeared they were a part of a collective consciousness. While the crystal aliens were of biochemical design to be of one sound mind, the aliens in the early Soviet crashes were discovered via autopsy to have microchip implants in the base of their skulls that sent signals that modified behavior and in general made them obey commands.

The aliens were, by definition to many in Soviet circles, communists. Comrades from another world it seemed.

It was quickly assigned by upper command as a task to modify and adapt the technology for Soviet use.

Subjects for the experiment varied along a wide range of factors and, to mark the chain of experiments, were scared just below the navel with a number to mark the order.

Results were difficult to come by and in the end, one thousand one hundred and sixteen people died. Because of that, the project was put on hiatus until Petrov came along and perfected it in order to bring Spalko back into the world of the living, who became the only survivor…number one thousand one hundred and seventeen.

_So you are not as much of a genius as you claim, dear Petrov. You merely wish to stand on the shoulders of geniuses that came before you._

Time moved on.

She saw a Petrov under review for early retirement. She saw him in his offices in Moscow begging for a reprieve and rambling about what they could manage with the Ark in their hands. And his superiors caved. They gave him the time and the staff, not out of respect or love of his past service…out of pity toward a scientist lost in a time where people believed in legends about magic rocks, flying men, and the cup of Christ. A time where there was a key to the future buried in some lost temple, awaiting discovery.

The only key to the future was a new kind of contest. A race…

…the space race…

…the peace race…

…the arms race…

The era had changed around Petrov. This race was about the path in front of you not the one behind you. Digging in the dirt meant going back to it. You don't find the answer in an ancient trashcan. You make it from scratch. No place in the shinny Russian satellite, Sputnik, for the old way of thinking. "But, hey," they all said, "give the old man a break. Let him chase his goose and when he comes back with his tail between his legs he'll understand and he'll go home. Times have changed. He'll learn."

Petrov knew what they thought of him. The chip on his shoulder was a mile wide. He was bound and determined to prove them wrong no matter what.

Irina flashed forward and saw defeat after defeat as Petrov's ranks got smaller and smaller. Petrov, wearing his protective goggles cursing behind his lead shield as the Ark's lid crashed closed after turning flesh and bone to ash. Time and time again, they melted into the living rock, pieces of their bodies blowing around like torn paper.

Maslov stood by, wisely averting his eyes while ark's magic ran wild, retching at the smell of boiling organs. He shared the opinion of his comrades all too well. A goose chase…pure and simple. He was a damned old fool.

_Pathetic. You had to wag every bit of your dimming reputation in their faces to get to them to take notice. This kind of science lingers in the dust of the future. The Ark is old news just like you…and me. Maybe I'm not the only one being outdated. However, I have the honor knowing it was fear that turned them against me and not idiotic dreams that only a crackpot could concoct._

_I'll show them all, Spalko._

_This is for Michael._

In the realm of the world as she still knew it, her eyes alit with fire. She could feel her essence degenerating, returning to the nothingness she'd danced with at Akator. She could see the remaining members of Petrov's staff disintegrating sharing her fate. She collapsed in agony, unable to stand upright. In the base of her skull, the microchip popped and shattered, evaporating into empty space along with the rest of her body.

The chip would not return to the physical realm with her.

…………………………………………………..

Petrov rose from his battered and corroded shield, pistol drawn. The spotlights had been destroyed in the wake. However, bits of sunlight poured in from the surface above guiding his eyes among the debris. Before him lay the ashes of his final chance back into the Union's graces with his head held high. The entire project was in ruins. The Ark, once again undisturbed sat peacefully on its altar. He moved among the refuse dashed and hopeless.

Then in his overwhelming despair he heard the sweet sound of the last laugh beckoning him. Breathing. Covered it ash and soot, the barely conscious Irina Spalko rolled over onto her stomach. A stiff chuckle escaped his throat. He sauntered toward her, the barrel pointed at her. As he pressed it against her forehead her eyes opened slightly.

"The Ark still has a surprise for you," was her hoarse greeting.

"How do you know?" He scoffed.

"It told me so."

As if on cue, Petrov's trigger hand broke off, landing on Irina's neckline, giving way to a flood of sand out of his arm. Aghast he stumbled backward. A deep indention in his hip appeared after a loud snap and began working its way up through his chest. He opened his mouth to scream and only hunks of dust, rock, and gravel seeped out. His knees gave way, crumbling into coal and dirt. Chip after chip, bits of the Soviet Colonel joined the earth. Painfully gasping for what air he could, sensing the end, the half-man scraped and clawed around on his good hand, losing more and more of his person.

It took about an hour for what was left of his body to stop moaning. Irina spent that time listening to it...savoring it.

"Back into the dirt."

After she was sure Petrov was gone, Irina propped herself up against a cave wall and started getting her bearings. She was no worse for wear it seemed. Of course she hadn't even dared to consider what lied ahead. She was in the middle of nowhere with no transportation. And she didn't care either. She still hadn't been able to even begin to cope with the fact that she'd been lied to and used as a pawn in some pitiful little scheme.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the overwhelming sense of a nearby presence in the dark.

"I can sense you." She said.

"I know."

The Ark had told her something else…concerning a certain British double agent.

She stared off into a far corner of the cavern and made out the pudgy khaki clad archeologist. "Mac…went up too…he didn't come back though did he?"

"No."

"You're one...of them."

"Yes."

Irina struggled to her feet. "Then why?"

Stirred by her sudden movement, _Mac _took a step further into the darkness. "Why what?"

"Why did you put me back on the Earth? Why did you allow me to walk straight into a lie?"

"Sometimes there are lies in truth and some truth in a lie."

"Don't play semantics. Answer me. You're the ones who plagued me with those other dreams without the Ark?"

He shook his head. "Sometimes things like that come from the inside."

"I'm not looking for redemption."

"I'm not offering any."

"You also didn't answer my question."

"Because there is nothing to answer. You were put back on the earth because as cruel and heinous as you are, you united the thirteen, and concordantly, you couldn't be killed or held captive. It is not our way."

Spalko buried her face into her hands and let out an exacerbated sigh.

"I know you were looking for something with a little more weight," the fake Mac said, "but, that's all there is. If indeed you felt compelled toward a different life path by an unseen force…perhaps you'd best look inside for the answers you seek."

"God damn it. Talk, talk,_ talk_. That's all you do."

"Come now. You really think an alien can tell you who you are? Don't be foolish."

"Stuff it."

"Be well angry one."

…………………………………………..

Outside, the sun was setting on the horizon. A subtle wind carried over the sands. Irina emerged from the cave empty and alone. She felt hollow. She'd been stripped of everything. Every time she found something to believe in, someone came along and spit on it and showed her ugliness in herself, her ignorance. There was nothing, she was nothing. It was as if she was still particles of dust in another dimension.

She clipped on her leather belt, .45 and all.

Her alien company departed from her as it had come, through the shadows, with no advice how to get back to civilization or how to lug a golden death box with her. That was the least of her cares. How she managed to keep going on so little initiative was beyond her.

Just outside the cave entrance she spotted a small row of jeeps, the only means of transportation for the small-alienated staff, dug into in a makeshift embankment. As she came upon them a familiar feeling of dread enveloped her intuition. From around the embankment wall stepped a black wide brim fedora she'd seen before.

"Porky."

"You did good, Spalko," his flat tone came as a welcoming token surprisingly. "I trust the Ark is down in the…dungeon?"

She stared a moment into the black pools that covered his eyes. "Yes." She hopped into the jeep. "Pass the word to Katanga. I'm going on my own now."

"Why?"

"Never you mind."

"Russia will think you're dead now. You're a woman without a country. Moving around will be tough."

"I'll manage."

"Not well enough."

"Yes, I know…and when it gets hard enough I expect I'll be hearing from you."

"You'll get used to it."

"I've made enough deals with the devil." Despite her steadfastness she knew better. Sooner or later down the line…X would call on her again…and she'd have no choice.

"Do me a favor, Porky."

"Yes?"

She plucked from her pocked the picture of the wife and kid. "Find out who they are. I doubt it'll be a challenge for a spook of your caliber."

"Once I've located them?" He asked as if it were already a sure thing that he'd find them easily.

"I want you to tell them daddy's not ever coming home." She started the engine.

"How did he die?"

"Saving my life."

He nodded, not completely understanding her reasoning.

Without the pleasantries of goodbyes, Irina was on her way back to the Old City, empty-handed. But, for some reason or another, the hole inside her was already filling up. In a certain sense she was free. Perhaps at the moment no path lay before her but she would create one whether good or bad. Didn't matter which as long as she stayed true to one thing…

…to be more than a banner on a flag.

_Thanks Pierce._

Fin.

Stay tuned. A Sequel is Comming...


End file.
